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ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 



MACAULAY'S 

ESSAY ON MILTON 



EDITED BY 

WILLIAM EDWARD MEAD 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 



NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 






Copyright, 1894 and 191 1, by 
American Book Company 

Macaulay's Milton 
w. p. I 



©CI,A283608 






o i INTRODUCTION. 

Thomas Baeington Macaulay was born in Leicestershire, 
Oct. 25, 1800. Before he was ten years old he showed a decided 
bent for Kterature, and wrote a good deal of juvenile prose and 
verse that attests his precocity. He entered Trinity College, 
Cambridge, in 1818. He was averse to mathematical and sci- 
entific studies, but achieved much distinction at the university 
by his poems and essays, and by his speeches in the debating 
society. In 1822 he received his degree, and four years later was 
admitted to the bar. 

When, about this time, commercial disaster befell his father, 
it w^as plain that Macaulay, upon whom the family support 
devolved, could not count for maintenance upon his chosen pro- 
fession of the law. At the instance of powerful friends, he was 
in 1828 made a commissioner of bankruptcy, and two years 
afterwards he entered the House of Commons as member fox 
Calne, a pocket borough in the gift of Lord Lansdowne. 

In 1834 he was appointed to a seat in the Supreme Council 
of India. This place he held till 1838. The munificent salary 
attached to it (£10,000) gave him the independence needful 
for the carrying out of his great literary work, the ^'History of 
England.'' His "Essays," by which he is best known to the 
general reader, were many of them of the nature of preHminary 
historical studies. Before his political preferment these pieces 

5 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

had served to increase Macaulay's slender income; those written 
after his return from India were the outcome of choice and 
greater leisure. 

Macau) ay reentered Parliament in 1839 — this time as mem- 
ber for Edinburgh — and became secretary of war in Mel- 
bourne's ministry. In 1846 he was paymaster general, as Chat- 
ham had been before him. 

The first two volumes of his history appeared in 1848, and 
were followed by two more in 1855. Two years later he was 
raised to the peerage. He died of heart disease in December, 
1859, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Comer, 
near the statue of Addison. 

Macaulay lacked some of the traits we are accustomed to 
look for in lofty natures. We are told that he was ignorant of 
the deeper emotions; that his sensibilities were not delicate; 
that he lacked piety of mind, had no sympathy with high specu- 
lation, and displayed but little interest even in the practical 
problems of science and social life. On the other hand, his vir- 
tues were many and great. He was an affectionate friend, and 
blameless, unselfish, and magnanimous in every relation of life. 
His nature was simple, manly, and straightforward. He hated 
lies, liars, and all evil; and one of the reasons he is never dull is 
that he was deeply in earnest in all he wrote. 

Macaulay's powers of memory were very great, and the extent 
of his reading has perhaps never been exceeded. Like Johnson, 
Coleridge, and other men of great information, he was an exu- 
berant talker; and like most men who talk well, he was, it may 
be, a poor listener. 

His fame rests on his ^'Lays of Ancient Rome," his ^^ His- 
tory of England," and his ''Essays." It is with the last that we 



INTRODUCTION, 7 

are here concerned. Though the titles of the essays suggest 
biography, most of them are in fact detached chapters of history. 

The essay upon the poet and statesman of the Commonwealth, 
of which this book furnishes the text, and which appeared in the 
•^Edinburgh Review" of 1825, while not the first of Macaulay's 
essays in order of composition, was the first to attract attention 
to the rising young barrister who had not long before come back 
to London from the imiversity with a brilliant reputation, and 
who was already widely known in the literary and political 
circles of the metropolis. In spite of redundancy and ornament, 
and a tendency to obscure, in the blaze of Milton's renown, 
some obvious blemishes of conduct and character, the essay was 
instantly recognized as the most remarkable contribution to the 
critical Hterature of that time, — a verdict which the lapse of 
nearly three quarters of a century has not disturbed. 

John Milton, ^' organ- voice of England," as Tennyson styles 
him, indisputably, after Shakespeare, the greatest of English 
poets, was born in London, Dec. 9, 1608. His father, whose 
name was also John, was by profession a scrivener. The house 
in Bread Street in which Milton was born, was known as the 
Spread Eagle, from the device of an eagle with outstretched 
wings over the doorway. Milton's father was himself a man of 
superior talents, who had been educated at Oxford University, 
but had afterwards embraced the doctrines of the Reformed 
Church. He was the poet's first teacher. 

In his tenth year the son was placed under the tuition of 
Thomas Young, a Puritan minister and an excellent scholar. 
After two years he was admitted to St. Paul's, a grammar school 
for classical instruction chiefly, where, as he afterwards wrote, 
he was *^ seized with such eagerness for the study of humane 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

letters, that from the twelfth year of my age I scarcely ever went 
from my lessons to bed before midnight; which, indeed, was the 
first cause of injury to my eyes." 

There is evidence that before Milton's school days were over 
he w^as not only a diligent student of English literature, but could 
read French and Italian, and had some knowledge of Hebrew. 
The father, too, though of a serious disposition, was a man of 
liberal culture, particularly noted as a musician and composer, 
and it was from him the poet received those first lessons in the 
delightful art which was to be the solace of his neglected age, 
and by which his ear was first attuned to the majestic harmonies 
of ^* Paradise Lost." 

With his early readings in Spenser and in Du Bartas, a French 
religious poet of the sixteenth century, we must connect Mil- 
ton's first efforts in English verse. Of these, the earliest that 
remain are paraphrases of two of the Psalms, published in his 
later life with the statement that they were written in his six- 
teenth year, the last year of his stay at St. Paul's School. 

On completing the course of study at St. Paul's, Milton was 
admitted a pensioner at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1625, 
whfere he was soon distinguished for his proficiency in classical 
learning, and for the ease and elegance of his Latin versification. 
During his second academic year, in 1626, the beautiful lines 
'^ On the Death of a Fair Infant," his first original English poem, 
were written. Milton remained at Cambridge for seven years, 
taking his master's degree in 1632, in his twenty-fourth year. 

On or about Christmas day, 1629, when in his twenty-first 
year, Milton composed the ode ^^On the Morning of Christ's 
Nativity," which Hallam describes as ^^ perhaps the most beau- 
tiful in the English language." To the same period, — that 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

is, in 1630, — belongs the well-known epitaph on Shakespeare, 
which, as far as is known, was the first of Milton's writings to 
appear in print. 

Milton's parents, in sending him to the university, had in 
view his entering the Church — that is, the English Church — 
as a profession, but to this his Puritan training and his own con- 
victions had made him so much averse that the project was 
abandoned. Before leaving college, indeed, he had expressed a 
preference for a literary career, for which his genius and the bent 
of his studies had so evidently destined him; and on repairing to 
the new home in the village of Horton, about seventeen miles 
from London, to which his father had retired, he addressed him- 
self seriously to this design. In the seclusion of this retreat, 
shut out from the world except during occasional visits to Lon- 
don, he devoted the next five years of his life to an assiduous 
review of the Greek and Latin classics, not omitting his study of 
the Italian poets and his readings in English literature. Of this 
literature but little had been written to interest or attract the 
student prior to the works of that brilliant galaxy of conspicu- 
ous men of Elizabeth's ^'spacious times," and of the succeeding 
reign. 

Among the poets in this era of England's literary splendor, 
with whose works we may reasonably presume Milton to have 
been more or less acquainted, were Spenser, Marlowe, Daniel, 
Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and Chapman. 
Of these Spenser was undoubtedly the favorite, Milton being, 
as Dryden says, Spenser's ^'poetical son." The influence of the 
^'Faerie Queene" and the *' Pastorals" was clearly traceable in 
the poems which he was now composing at Horton, and these, 
if '^Paradise Lost" had never been conceived, would have amply 



lO INTRODUCTION. 

satisfied his cherished hope of ^^an immortaHty of fame." They 
were the sonnet ^'To the Nightingale/' ^X' Allegro" and ^^11 
Penseroso," the two masques, ^^ Arcades" and "Comus," and 
^Xycidas." 

In 1638 Milton left England to make his long-contemplated 
visit to the Continent, then in a greatly disturbed condition by 
reason of the Thirty Years' War. After a brief stay in Paris, he 
proceeded leisurely on his journey through southern France 
^ towards the goal of his wishes, Italy, going by way of Genoa and 
Pisa to Florence, where he remained for two months. In that 
city, the glorious foster mother of art and poesy, Milton explored 
the galleries and museums, and was soon placed on a footing of 
friendship with many of its learned men, to whom the beauty of 
his person and his elegant scholarship commended him. His 
most interesting meeting of this kind was that with Galileo, then 
living in a suburb of Florence, in a seclusion enforced upon him 
by the Inquisition, for maintaining that the earth moves round 
the sun. At Rome he spent two months, making diligent study 
of its antiquities, and extending his acquaintance among its 
scholars and literati, many of whom were Jesuit priests. Milton 
then visited, in turn, Naples, Bologna, Venice, and lastly 
Geneva, setting foot again in England, after an absence of little 
more than a year, in the summer of 1639. 

With his resources somewhat depleted by the expense of his 
travels, Milton settled in London, and undertook the instruction 
of his sister's two sons, an occupation that admitted of abundant 
leisure for the prosecution of his studies, to which he now re- 
turned with fresh zest, and with a mind greatly expanded and 
fructified by his Italian journey. 

In 1625 James I had died, and his son Charles had come to 



INTRODUCTION. II 

the throne. The doctrine of the ^'divine right" of kings, though 
existing as a sort of tradition among English sovereigns, was now 
defined and formulated for the first time. It asserted that hered- 
itary monarchy was established by direct act of the Supreme 
Being, that the king could do no wrong, and that no human 
power could limit or abrogate his authority. It was easy to see 
that if this odious doctrine were allowed to have free sway, a 
despotism might be set up on EngHsh soil that would speedily 
stifle the spirit of Hberty which was now widely diffused, and 
deprive the people of many of their most cherished rights. This 
consummation the people were making ready to resist to the 
death. 

In such a contest it was of course impossible for one like Mil- 
ton, whose love of freedom had been instilled into him from his 
youth, to remain neutral. We know, indeed, that his decision 
had long before been made. He was not, in the strictest sense, 
a Puritan. Many of his tastes and associations, his love of art 
and letters and of the elegancies of Hfe, inclined him to sympa- 
thy with the Royahsts, or CavaUers. But in principle a demo- 
crat, these traits in his character, so far from making him half- 
hearted or lukewarm, only served to intensify his hatred of 
tyranny, and to render his weapons of assault upon it more 
effective and deadly. 

In 1629 the House of Commons, presenting a determined re- 
sistance to the king's encroachments on their privileges and to 
his repeated violations of law, had refused to grant the supplies 
he demanded, and had extorted from him the Petition of Right, 
by which he bound himself *^ never again to raise money without 
the consent of the Houses, nor imprison any person except in 
due course of law, nor subject his people to the jurisdiction of 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

courts-martial." This solemn compact, however, Charles took 
occasion soon after to break. He dissolved the ParUament, 
which was not again convoked until 1640, and took the reins of 
government into his own hands. Associating with himself two 
efficient and willing instruments of oppression, Thomas Went- 
worth, Earl of Strafford, and William Laud, Archbishop of 
Canterbury, he reestablished the infamous Star Chamber and 
High Commission Courts, the one a political, the other a reli- 
gious, inquisition, in order to still further rivet his fetters upon 
the English people. To make this more effective, a standing 
army was needed, and to provide for its maintenance he revived 
an old tax, known as ^'ship money," raised in time of war for 
maritime defense, never exacted in time of peace, and long fallen 
into disuse. This act, together with others as arbitrary and 
illegal, at length thoroughly roused the spirit of the nation. In 
1640 that memorable assembly, the Long Parliament, met, and 
the flames of civil war were finally kindled. This brief summary 
of events has been given in order to present a somewhat con- 
nected view of the condition of the country, and of the state of 
parties, at the time Milton began to take an active part in pub- 
lic affairs. 

In 1 64 1 Milton entered the lists for the defense of liberty in 
religion, with the publication of the treatise ''Reformation of 
Church Discipline in England," his first prose work, in which 
occur passages of sublimity and of rhythmic beauty unsurpassed 
in our prose literature. This was followed by other tractates 
upon the same subject, in one of which, ''The Reason of 
Church Government," partly autobiographical, he utters 
words prophetic of what was to be his life's crowning work, 
expressing the hope that he "might perhaps leave something 



INTRODUCTION, 13 

SO written to after times, as they should not willingly let it 
die." 

In 1643 Milton, after a brief courtship, married Mary Powell, 

i daughter of a Royalist justice of the peace in Oxfordshire. She 
was but little more than seventeen years of age when he brought 
her to the new^ home in Aldersgate Street, London, to which he 

li had removed, and where his father soon after came to live with 
him. The young wife was not happy in this Puritan household, 
with the society of a recluse scholar and his somewhat austere 
way of living. Yielding to her entreaty, Milton presently con- 
sented to her spending the summer at her father's house; but 
\Yhen her leave of absence had expired, the gayety and delights 
of her childhood's home seeming doubly sweet to her, she felt 
no inclination to return. To Milton's many letters she made no 
reply, and a messenger sent with a more urgent request was 
contemptuously dismissed. Discovering his mistake too late, 
and with the view to justify himself in the step he was contem- 
plating, he published a tract called ^^The Doctrine and Disci- 
pline of Divorce," which he had actually begun to write before 
his wife had left him. It must be confessed that in this treatise 
— followed by a second of like tenor — Milton appears in no 
very amiable light, as, in defending his thesis wdth great display 
of learning, copious reference to the Mosaic law, and quotation 
of Old and New Testament texts, he shows little consideration 
for the young and simple girl, less than half his own age, who had 
committed her future life and happiness into his hands. No 
proceedings of divorce, however, were instituted, and some 
time after, through the intercession of friends, a reconciliation 
w^as effected, which proved a lasting one. 

In 1644 Milton published his ^'Tractate on Education," in 



14 INTRODUCTION, 

which, discarding the old scholastic methods of study, he out- 
lined a scheme anticipating by nearly two centuries the enlight- 
ened views which now prevail. He advocated the teaching of 
things rather than words, and a course of systematic instruction 
in the facts of nature, of life, and of science, together with a 
training in virtuous conduct and the highest literary culture. 
In the same year appeared the ^^Areopagitica,'' a speech, as he 
termed it, for the liberty of unlicensed printing, against the 
oppressive licensing system, or censorship of the press, which 
had been in operation for some time, and was being enforced 
with renewed rigor. This is the best known of Milton's pam- 
phlets, and for the sustained vigor and majesty of its style, its 
splendid eloquence, and its unanswerable logic, is justly consid- 
ered his greatest work in prose. 

In 1645 Milton made a collection of his poems, English, 
Latin, and Italian, for the press, in which ^X'AUegro" and ^^11 
Penseroso," with others, written long before at Horton, were 
printed for the first time. In this year, too, the civil war was 
drawing to an end. The battle of Naseby was fought, resulting 
in the complete rout of the Royalist forces, the flight of King 
Charles to Scotland, and his surrender to the Parliamentary 
army. 

In 1647 his father died, a parent to whose unceasing care and 
affection he had been so much indebted, and to whose many 
virtues he had borne grateful testimony fifteen years before in a 
Latin poem, "Ad Patrem.'' During this year Milton was busy 
in collecting material for a Latin dictionary and for a history of 
Britain from the earliest times to the Norman Conquest, and in 
the preparation of a complete ''Digest of Christian Doctrine," 
labors from which he was diverted, however, by the more im- 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

perative duties which he was presently called to assume in the 
new government. 

The year 1649 was a momentous one, for in that year, with 
monarchy destroyed in the person of the king, were laid the 
foundations of a republic, known to all after time as the Com- 
monwealth. To its constitution Milton at once gave in his ad- 
hesion by his publication of the '' Tenure of Kings and Magis- 
trates,'' a reply to the pamphlets and sermons of the English 
Presbyterian clergy, who were now representing the moderate 
party, and were protesting against the execution of the king. 

Milton, now in his forty-first year, was selected by the chiefs 
of the Republican party to be their Latin secretary in the newly 
created Coimcil of State, to conduct their foreign correspond- 
ence in that tongue in which he was so eminently skilled, and 
which at that time was universally in use for that purpose. 
Among other work assigned him by the Council was a reply to 
a book, '^Eikon Basihke'' (The Royal Image), which had ap- 
peared but a short time after the king's death, and w^hich, pur- 
porting to be by the king's own hand, was regarded as a sort of 
spiritual autobiography of his last years. This reply was called 
" Eikonoklastes " (Image-Breaker), in which, following the text 
of the king's book, Milton commented upon each passage in a 
spirit of animosity towards the royal martyr, more trenchant, 
direct, and personal than he had shown even in the "Tenure." 

His great labor during the year 1650 was the preparation, by 
order of the Council, of the "Defensio pro Populo Anglicano" 
(Defense of the English People), in answer to Claude de Sau- 
maise, better known by his Latinized name of Salmasius. The 
latter was a Frenchman born, but for some time settled in Ley- 
den, and a scholar of immense erudition, who had been em- 



l6 INTRODUCTION. 

ployed by Charles II, then in refuge at The Hague, to write a 
defense of the monarchy. The ^^Defensio'' demolished this 
apology for the king as though it were a house of cards, and was 
the first of Milton's prose works to give him celebrity on the 
Continent. In reviewing it, however, at this distance of time, 
one cannot fail to be amazed at the ferocity which Milton dis- 
played in his methods of attack, and at the abuse and scurrility 
heaped without stint, and so undeservedly, upon Salmasius. 
With all due allowance for the customs then prevailing in this 
kind of warfare, it is difficult to make excuse for him, or to 
reconcile our ideal of his character with the author of this de- 
fense. A melancholy interest attaches to it, which should soften 
the asperity of criticism, for, working upon it night and day, it 
was completed finally at great and irreparable loss to himself, 
— that of his sight. 

In 1654 his Second Defense was published, one of the most 
interesting of his writings, by reason of its numerous passages 
of autobiography, its eloquent eulogy of Cromwell and other 
notable men of the Commonwealth, and its noble self- 
defense and expression of his consolation under the affliction 
of blindness, with which his adversaries had reproached him. 
The sensation created on the Continent by this work was enor- 
mous. The attention of scholars and statesmen in France, 
Germany, Holland, and Sweden was at once drawn to it, and we 
are told that, without exception, every foreigner then resident 
in London in an official capacity, called upon Milton personally 
to offer his congratulations. It would be idle, perhaps, to spec- 
ulate how widely its influence was disseminated in those coun- 
tries, but unquestionably in England this and other of Milton's 
prose works were largely instrumental in instructing the public 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

conscience, and in upbuilding and fortifying that public opinion 
of which the Commonwealth had been a natural outgrowth, and 
which has rendered possible constitutional government as it 
exists in England and in America to-day. 

Milton's first wife died in 1652, leaving three daughters; and 
after four years' widowerhood, in 1656 he married Catherine, 
daughter of a Captain Woodcock of London, who died within a 
year after their union, and to whose memory he paid affection- 
ate tribute in one of the most beautiful of his sonnets. 

Of the long series of letters addressed by Milton, as Latin 
secretary for the government, to the foreign powers, more than 
two thirds were dictated during Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, 
a fact remarkable, if it is considered that when he entered the 
Protector's service, in 1653, he had become totally blind. 

It was in May, 1658, that Milton returned to the design of 
writing an epic poem, which he had meditated eighteen years 
before, soon after his journey to Italy, and which he had then 
thought of treating in the form of a sacred tragedy. The myth- 
ical exploits of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table 
had at one time taken a strong hold upon his imagination, and 
he had contemplated making them the subject of his great poem, 
but he now settled finally upon that of ^' Paradise Lost," in which 
he proposed to recount the story of 

"Man's first disobedience and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree." 

Early in the year 1660 Milton published the "Ready and 
Easy Way to EstabUsh a Free Commonwealth," the last of his 
writings of this kind of special significance, and his last effort 
to stay the returning tide, upon the topmost wave of which the 



1 8 INTRODUCTION. 

'^ Merry Monarch" was seated. Two months later the Resto- 
ration was accomplished, and Milton, abandoning his post only 
when all hope was gone, and leaving his home secretly, went 
to live in hiding with a friend in an obscure part of London. 
There he remained in concealment, in constant danger of dis- 
covery, for over three months, while his fate hung in the balance. 
His escape finally from the doom of so many others, far less 
prominent in the affairs of the Commonwealth, was owing to 
the accidental omission of his name from among the ^^excep- 
tions" in the bill of indemnity, and is to be regarded as little 
short of miraculous. 

Towards the end of the year 1662 he had dictated about one 
half of ^^ Paradise Lost,'' the actual composition of which he had 
begun in 1658, four years before. In this work he was assisted 
somewhat unwillingly by his daughters, who, strange to say, 
had been very imperfectly educated; and some of the friends 
who were still faithful to him, among them Thomas Ellwood, the 
Quaker, aided him with their criticisms. 

In this year, 1662, Milton, then fifty-four years old, married 
for his third wife a young lady of good family, who proved a 
faithful companion and helpmeet to him to the end of his life. 

It was in a house in Artillery Walk, near what was then known 
as Bunhill Fields, and the last of his many London residences, 
that ^'Paradise Lost'' was completed, in the autumn of 1665. 
Two years later, in 1667, after thorough revision, it was given 
to the world. 

The reception of such a poem, with the '^Fall of Man" for its 
theme, in which were to be found in such rich profusion '^things 
\mattempted yet in prose or rhyme," was necessarily cold in that 
irreverent and licentious age. But among the learned and the 



INTRODUCTION, 19 

judicious few it speedily gained many admirers. Andrew Mar- 
veil, Milton's old-time friend and associate, wrote some com- 
mendatory verses upon it, and Dryden, recognizing the new and 
greater light dawning upon England, was generous in its praise. 

In 1670 appeared the long deferred "History of Britain." The 
work is chiefly valuable to students of English literature for its 
entertaining collection and abstract of the British legends of 
the mythical, or pre-Roman, period, and those pertaining to 
King Arthur. 

About this time, Milton's three daughters finally separated 
from him. Long dissatisfied with their task of reading to him 
from books, many of them in foreign tongues, of which they 
knew nothing, and chafing under his parental restraint, they 
determined to make provision for their future livelihood by learn- 
ing "some ingenious sorts of manufacture proper for women to 
learn," for which purpose he furnished them the means of sup- 
port, at great expense to himself, out of his impaired estate. 

The year was made further memorable by the appearance in 
one volume of two poems, "Paradise Regained" and "Samson 
Agonistes." The "Paradise Regained," in which the Evangel- 
ist's simple story of Christ's temptation is enriched and amplified 
in the glowing fires of Milton's imagination, with a splendor of 
diction and a wealth of imagery to which no English writer since 
Shakespeare could make pretension, was no doubt suggested to 
him some years before, by the Quaker Ellwood, who on return- 
ing the manuscript of "Paradise Lost" remarked: "Thou hast 
said much here of Paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of 
Paradise found?" "Samson Agonistes" is a lyrical drama, 
which, though in form modeled strictly upon those of ancient 
Greece, Milton's genius has made an EngUsh classic, elevated and 



20 INTRODUCTION, 

inspiring in thought and language, and of exquisite metrical 
structure. A ''Treatise on Logic," a second edition of his 
"Minor Poems,'' and a tract called ''True Religion and Tolera- 
tion," were the last works upon which his still active and alert 
mind was engaged. 

In the summer of 1674 the gout was making serious inroads 
upon his health, but it was not until autumn that the disease 
assumed a threatening form, when, after a brief illness, compar- 
atively free from pain, he expired on Sunday, Nov. 8, 1674, 
wanting but one month of being sixty-six years of age. He was 
buried in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, London, beside 
his father, and according to the rites of the Church of England. 

A posthumous work by Milton, a "Treatise on Christian Doc- 
trine," was discovered in 1823 among the state papers, where 
it had been lying in manuscript for over a hundred and fifty 
years. This was edited and published in the original Latin and 
in an English translation, by Rev. Charles R. Sumner, in 1825, 
and the appearance of this translation was the occasion of the 
following essay by Macaulay. In this, his final confession of 
faith as we may consider it, Milton appears to have wandered 
from his primitive Calvinistic beliefs to something almost iden- 
tical with modern Unitarian doctrines. 



MILTON.' 

[Edinburgh Review, August, iS2j,'\ 

TOWARDS the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy 
keeper of the state papers, in the course of his researches 
among the presses of his office met with a large Latin manu- 
script. With it were found corrected copies of the foreign dis- 
patches written by Milton while he filled the office of secretary ,2 5 
and several papers relating to the Popish Trials and the Rye 
House Plot.^ The whole was wrapped up in an envelope, super- 
scribed, To Mr. Ski?iner, Merchant. On examination the large 
manuscript proved to be the long lost essay on the Doctrines of 
Christianity, which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton fin- 10 
ished after the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. 
Skinner, it is well known, held the same political opinions with 
his illustrious friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon 
conjectures, that he may have fallen under the suspicions of the 
government during that persecution of the Whigs ^ which fol- 15 
lowed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament;^ and that, in 

1 Joannis Miltoni, Angli, de Doctrind Christiana libri duo posthumi. A 
Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone. 
By John Milton, translated from the original by Charles R. Sumner, M.A., 
etc., 1825. 

2 See Introduction, p. 15. 

2 A conspiracy to assassinate Charles II. It was discovered, and several 
prominent persons implicated in it suffered death. 

4 A political party which took its rise in the reign of Charles I, and 
which was devoted to the cause of popular rights. 

5 The Oxford Parliament was held in March, 1681, and in a few days was 
dissolved. 



22 MACAULAY, 

consequence of a general seizure of his papers, this work may 
have been brought to the office in which it has been found. 
But whatever the adventures of the manuscript may have been, 
no doubt can exist that it is a genuine rehc of the great poet. 

5 Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his majesty to edit and 
translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of his task in a man- 
ner honorable to his talents and to his character. His version is 
not, indeed, very easy or elegant ; but it is entitled to the praise 
of clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with interesting quo- 

lo tations, and have the rare merit of really elucidating the text. 
The preface is evidently the work of a sensible and candid man, 
firm in his own religious opinions, and tolerant towards those of 
others. 

The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. It 

IS is, like all his Latin works, well written, though not exactly in 
the style of the prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. ^ There 
is no elaborate imitation of classical antiquity, no scrupulous 
purity, none of the ceremonial cleanness which characterizes the 
diction of our academical Pharisees. The author does not at- 

20 tempt to polish and brighten his composition into the Ciceronian ^ 
gloss and briUiancy. He does not, in short, sacrifice sense and 
spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of his subject com- 
pelled him to use many words 

^* That would have made Quintilian ^ stare and gasp." 

25 But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were 
his mother tongue ; and, where he is least happy, his failure seems 
to arise from the carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance 

1 Oxford and Cambridge are the two great universities of England. 

2 Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), an orator, statesman, and man 
of letters of the first rank in ancient Rome. AVith a somewhat diffuse and 
ornate style, he possessed great vehemence and power of invective. 

3 Quintilian (A.D. 35-100 ?), a teacher of eloquence in Rome, who wrote 
a complete treatise on rhetoric and oratory. The line is from one of Milton's 
sonnets. 



MILTON. 23 

of a foreigner. We may apply to him what Denham ^ with great 
felicity says of Cowley.^ He wears the garb, but not the clothes, 
of the ancients. 

Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a power- 
ful and independent mind, emancipated from the influence of s 
authority, and devoted to the search of truth. Milton professes 
to form his system from the Bible alone ; and his digest of scrip- 
tural texts is certainly among the best that have appeared. But 
he is not always so happy in his inferences as in his citations. 

Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows seem to have 10 
excited considerable amazement, particularly his Arianism,^ and 
his theory on the subject of polygamy.^ Yet we can scarcely 
conceive that any person could have read the ''Paradise Lost*' 
without suspecting him of the former ; nor do we think that any 
reader, acquainted with the history of his life, ought to be much is 
startled at the latter. The opinions which he has expressed re- 
specting the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter, and the 
observation of the Sabbath, might, we think, have caused more 
just surprise. 

But we will not go into the discussion of these points. The 20 
book, were it far more orthodox or far more heretical than it is, 
would not much edify or corrupt the present generation. The 
men of our time are not to be converted or perverted by quartos.^ 
A few more days and this essay wall follow the " Defensio Pop- 
uli " ^ to the dust and silence of the upper shelf. The name of 25 

1 Sir John Denham (1615-69), a writer and poet contemporary with Mil- 
ton, chiefly known by his Cooper's Hill, a poem descriptive of the Thames. 

2 Abraham Cowley (1618—67), a poet highly esteemed in his time, best 
known to modern readers by his essays, written in an easy and graceful 
style. He was a Royalist in the civil war. 

3 A theological system, named after Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria (third 
century), 'denying a trinity of coequal persons in the Godhead. 

4 A plurality of wives. Milton's views on the subject are found in his 
works on divorce. 

5 Books in which the leaves are twice folded, making four leaves, 
C See Introduction, p. 15. 



24 MACAULAY, 

its author, and the remarkable circumstances attending its pub- 
lication, will secure to it a certain degree of attention. For a 
month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every 
drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine ; and it 
s will then, to borrow the elegant language of the playbills, be 
withdrawn to make room for the forthcoming novelties. 

We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, transient 
as it may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous Capu- 
chins ^ never choose to preach on the life and miracles of a saint 
lo till they have awakened the devotional feelings of their auditors 
by exhibiting some relic of him, — a thread of his garment, a lock 
of his hair, or a drop of his blood. On the same principle, we 
intend to take advantage of the late interesting discovery, and, 
while this memorial of a great and good man is still in the hands 
IS of all, to say something of his moral and intellectual qualities. 
Nor, we are convinced, will the severest of our readers blame us 
if, on an occasion like the present, we turn for a short time from 
^ the topics of the day, to commemorate, in all love and reverence, 
( the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, 
1 20 the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the champion 
and the martyr of Enghsh hberty. 

It is by his poetry that Milton is best known ; and it is of his 
poetry that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage of 
the civihzed world, his place has been assigned among the great- 
25 est masters of the art. His detractors, however, though outvoted, 
have not been silenced. There are many critics, and some of 
great name, who contrive in the same breath to extol the poems 
and to decry the poet. The works they acknowledge, consid- 
ered in themselves, may be classed among the noblest produc- 
30 tions of the human mind. But they will not allow the author to 
rank with those great m^en, whoj born in the infancy of civiliza- 
tion, supplied by their own powers the want of instruction ; and, 

1 A branch of the Franciscan Order in the Roman Catholic Church, so 
named from the capuche^ or cowl, worn by the friars in imitation of 
St. Francis. 



MILTON. 25 

though destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to posterity 
models which defy imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what 
his predecessors created : he lived in an enhghtened age ; he re- 
ceived a finished education ; and we must, therefore, if we would 
form a just estimate of his powers, make large deductions in con- $ 
sideration of these advantages. 

We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark 
may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more 
unfavorable circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has 
himself owmed, whether he had not been born '' an age too late." 10 
For this notion Johnson ^ has thought fit to make him the butt 
of much clumsy ridicule. The poet, we believe, understood the 
nature of his art better than the critic. He knew that his poet- 
ical genius derived no advantage from the civilization which sur- 
rounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired ; and 15 
he looked back with something hke regret to the ruder age of 
simple words and vivid impressions. 

We think that as civilization advances poetry almost necessa- 
rily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great 
works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do 20 
not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark 
ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and 
splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civiHzed 
age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most 
orthodox article of literary faith, that the earhest poets are gen- 25 
erally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the excep- 
tion. Surely, the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates a cor- 
responding uniformity in the cause. 

The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress 
of the experimental sciences to that of the imitative arts. The 30 

1 Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-84), the most famous man of letters of the 
eighteenth century in England. He wrote an English Dictionary, The Ram- 
bler (a series of papers in the style of The Spectator), Lives of the Poets, etc. 
His Life of Milton does scant justice to the poet, owing to Johnson's violent 
Tory prejudices. 



26 MAC AULA Y, 

improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent 
in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining 
them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still some- 
thing to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the 

5 use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and trans- 
mits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. 
In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great 
disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. 
Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily sur- 

lo pass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. 
Marcet's^ little dialogues on political economy could teach Monta- 
gue 2 or Walpole ^ many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man 
may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few years to mathe- 
matics, learn more than the great Newton^ knew after half a cen- 

15 tury of study and meditation. 

But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. 
Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely 
supplies these arts with better objects of imitation. It may 
indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to the me- 

2o chanical operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. 
But language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his pur- 
pose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive 
and then abstract. They advance from particular images to 
general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society 

25 is philosophical ; that of a half-civilized people is poetical. 

1 Mrs. Marcet (1769-1858), a writer on educational subjects, notably nat- 
ural philosophy and political economy. The latter is the science pertaining 
to the production and distribution of wealth. 

2 Charles Montague, Lord Halifax (1661-1715), a poet, financier, and 
statesman, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the reign of William III. 

3 Sir Robert Walpole (i 676-1 745) was distinguished as a statesman, also 
as Chancellor of the Exchequer under George I and George II. 

* Sir Isaac Newton (i 642-1 727), the greatest of English mathematicians 
and natural philosophers. He discovered the law of gravitation, shared with 
Leibnitz the honor of discovering the calculus, and made many original and 
brilliant discoveries in optics. 



MILTON. 27 

This change in the language of men is partly the cause and 
partly the effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their 
intellectual operations, of a change by which science gains and 
poetry loses. Generalization is necessary to the advancement of 
knowledge ; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of s 
the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think 
more, they look less at individuals and more at classes. They 
therefore make better theories and worse poems. They give us 
vague phrases instead of images, and personified qualities instead 
of men. They may be better able to analyze human nature than 10 
their predecessors. But analysis is not the business of the poet. 
His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may believe in a 
moral sense, like Shaftesbury;^ he may refer all human actions 
to self-interest, like Helvetius;^ or he may never think about the 
matter at all. ^ His creed on such subjects will no more influence 15 
his poetry, properly so called, than the notions which a painter 
may have conceived respecting the lachrymal glands, or the cir- / 
culation of the blood, will affect the tears of his Niobe,^ or the 
blushes of his Aurora.^ If Shakespeare had written a book on 
the motives of human actions, it is by no means certain that it 20 
would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable that 
it would have contained half so much able reasoning on the sub- 
ject as is to be found in the " Fable of the Bees." But could 

1 Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), a philosopher, who in his Character- 
istics, written in an affected style, maintained that everything in the world is 
for the best. 

2 Helvetius (171 5-71), a French philosopher. The central idea in his 
system of philosophy was that self-interest is the motive power in human 
conduct. 

3 A character in Greek mythology, who had twelve children, and who 
taunted Latona for having only two, Apollo and Diana. Latona, enraged, 
compelled her children to slay all those of Niobe, who was then changed into 
stone on a mountain in Lydia. From this stone, drops of water like tears were 
said to flow every summer. 

^ The goddess of dawn, according to the Greek myth, who preceded the 
Sun in his rising. 



28 MACAULAY, 

Mandevillei have created an lago?^ Well as he knew how to 
resolve characters into their elements, would he have been able 
to combine those elements in such a manner as to make up a 
man, — a real, living, individual man ? 
5 Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, 
without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives 
so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we 
mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in verse. 
Our definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on 

lo other grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean 
the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an 
illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words 
what the painter does by means of colors. Thus the greatest of 
poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigor 

15 and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account 
of the just notion which they convey of the art in which he ex- 
celled : — 

'^ As imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
20 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 

A local habitation and a name."^ 

These are the fruits of the '' fine frenzy " which he ascribes to 
the poet, — a fine frenzy, doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, in- 
deed, is essential to poetry ; but it is the truth of madness. The 
25 reasonings are just ; but the premises are false. After the first 
suppositions have been made, everything ought to be consistent ; 
but those first suppositions require a degree of credulity which 
almost amounts to a partial and temporary derangement of the 
intellect. Hence of all people children are the most imagina- 

1 Bernard de Mandeville (1670 ?-i733), an ethical and satirical writer who, 
in his Fable of the Bees, asserted that private vices are public benefits, and 
that all virtue has its root in selfishness. 

2 A leading character in Shakespeare's Othello, and a type of utter depravity. 

3 Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream, act v, sc. i. 



MILTON. 29 

tive. They abandon themselves without reserve to every illu- 
sion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental 
eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man, whatever 
his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear ^ as a 
little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Ridingliood. She s 
knows that it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are 
no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowledge she be- 
lieves ; she weeps ; she trembles ; she dares not go into a dark 
room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. 
Such is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds. 10 

In a rude state of society men are children with a greater 
variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that 
we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest 
perfection. In an enlightened age there will be much intelli- 
gence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of just classi- 15 
fication and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence, 
abundance of verses, and even of good ones ; but little poetry. 
Men will judge and compare ; but they will not create. They 
will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to a 
certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to 20 
conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder ances- 
tors, — the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The Greek 
Rhapsodists,^ according to Plato,^ could scarce recite Homer ^ 
without falHng into convulsions. The Mohawk ^ hardly feels the 
scalping knife while he shouts his death song. The power which 25 
the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised over their 

1 Two of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. 

2 The Rhapsodists were a class of men in ancient Greece who went from 
place to place reciting poetry, principally from the two epic poems of Homer. 

3 A great philosopher of Athens, born about 427 B.C. He was a pupil 
of Socrates, of whose life and teachings he wrote in his Dialogues. 

4 The reputed author of the two great Greek epic poems, the IHad and 
the Odyssey. The subject of the former is the ten years' siege of Troy, and 
the latter describes the adventures of Ulysses in returning from Troy. 

5 The Mohawks were a tribe of North American Indians, now nearly 
extinct. 



30 MACAULAY. 

auditors seems to modern readers almost miraculous. Such feel- 
ings are very rare in a civilized community, and most rare among 
those who participate most in its improvements. They linger 
longest among the peasantry. 
5 Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic 
lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as 
the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its pur- 
pose most completely in a dark age. As the light of knowledge 
breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of certainty become 

lo more and more definite, and the shades of probability more and 
more distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phantoms which 
the poet calls up grow fainter and fainter. We cannot unite the 
incompatible advantages of reality and deception, the clear dis- 
cernment of truth, and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction. 

IS He who, in an enlightened and Hterary society, aspires to be 
a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to 
pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of 
that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief 
title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him. 

20 His difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the pur- 
suits which are fashionable among his contemporaries ; and that 
proficiency will in general be proportioned to the vigor and 
activity of his mind. And it is well if, after all his sacrifices and 
exertions, his works do not resemble a lisping man or a modern 

25 ruin. We have seen in our own time great talents, intense labor, 
and long meditation employed in this struggle against the spirit 
of the age, and employed, we will not say absolutely in vain, but 
with dubious success and feeble applause. 

If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over 

30 greater difficulties than Milton. He received a learned educa- 
tion ; he was a profound and elegant classical scholar ; he had 
studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical hterature;^ he was inti- 

1 Rabbinical literature (from Hebrew rabbi^ meaning ''master") is that 
of the Jews in the later periods of their history. 



MILTON, 31 

mately acquainted with every language of modern Europe from 
which either pleasure or information was then to be derived. 
He was perhaps the only great poet of later times who has been 
distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. The genius 
of Petrarch ^ was scarcely of the first order ; and his poems in s 
the ancient language, though much praised by those who have 
never read them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with all 
his admirable wit and ingenuity, had little imagination ; nor in- 
deed do we think his classical diction comparable to that of Mil- 
ton. The authority of Johnson is against us on this point. But 10 
Johnson had studied the bad writers of the middle ages till he 
had become utterly insensible to the Augustan 2 elegance, and 
was as ill qualified to judge between two Latin styles as a habit- 
ual drunkard to set up for a wine taster. 

Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a farfetched, 15 
costly, sickly imitation of that which elsewhere may be found in 
healthful and spontaneous perfection. The soils on which this 
rarity flourishes are in general as ill suited to the production of 
vigorous native poetry as the flowerpots of a hothouse to the 
growth of oaks. That the author of the '' Paradise Lost " should 20 
have written the '' Epistle to Manso " ^ was truly wonderful. Never 
before were such marked originaHty and such exquisite mimicry 
found together. Indeed, in all the Latin poems of Milton, the 
artificial manner indispensable to such works is admirably pre- 
served, while, at the same time, his genius gives to them a pecu- 25 
liar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, which distinguishes 
them from all other writings of the same class. They remind us 

1 The greatest of Italian lyric poets (1304-74), and one of the most learned 
men of his time, who collected and transcribed several precious Latin manu- 
scripts. 

2 Referring to the reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus (63 B.C.- 
A.D. 14), a period of great refinement in literature, as shown in the writings 
of Horace, Vergil, Ovid, and others. 

3 A Latin poem addressed by Milton, when in Italy, to a nobleman by 
whom he was entertained, a friend of the poet Tasso. 



32 MACAULAY. 

of the amusements of those angehc warriors who composed the 
cohort of Gabriel : — 

** About him exercised heroic games 
The unarmed youth of heaven ; but nigh at hand 
5 Celestial armory, shields, helms, and spears, 

Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold." ^ 

We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the genius 
of Milton ungirds itself, without catching a glimpse of the gor- 
geous and terrible panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The 

lo strength of his imagination triumphed over every obstacle. So 

intense and ardent was the fire of his mind, that it not only was 

not suffocated beneath the weight of fuel, but penetrated the 

whole superincumbent mass with its own heat and radiance. 

It is nof our intention to attempt anything like a complete 

15 examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been 
agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the in- 
comparable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of that 
style which no rival has been able to equal and no parodist to 
degrade, which displays in their highest perfection the idiomatic 

20 powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient and 
every modern language has contributed something of grace, of 
energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism on which we 
are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their sickles. 
Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a 

25 straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf. 

The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the 
extreme remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts 
on the reader. Its effect is produced, not so much by what it 
expresses, as by what it suggests ; not so much by the ideas 

30 which it directly conveys, as by other ideas which are connected 
with them. He electrifies the mind through conductors. The 
most unimaginative man must understand the Iliad.^ Homer 

1 Milton's Paradise Lost, Book IV., lines 551-54. 

2 See Note 4, p. 29. 



MILTON, 33 

gives him no choice, and requires from him no exertion, but 
takes the whole upon himself, and sets the images in so clear a 
light that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works of 
Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed unless the mind of ' 
the reader cooperate with that of the writer. He does not s 
paint a finished picture, or play for a mere passive Hstener. He 
sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. He strikes the 
keynote, and expects his hearer to make out the melody. 

We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The ex- 
pression in general means nothing ; but, applied to the writings ic 
of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an in- 
cantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its 
occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more 
in his words than in other words. But they are words of en- 
chantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is is 
present and the distant near. 'New forms of beauty start at once 
into existence, and all the bunal places of the memory give up 
their dead. Change the structure of the sentence ; substitute one I 
synonym for another, and the whole effect is destroyed, j The 
spell loses its power ; and he who should then hope to conjure 20 
with it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the 
Arabian tale, when he stood crying, '^ Open Wheat," '' Open Bar- 
ley," to the door which obeyed no sound but " Open Sesame." 1 
The miserable failure of Dryden 2 in his attempt to translate into 
his own diction some parts of the '' Paradise Lost " is a remark- 25 
able instance of this. 

In support of these observations we may remark, that scarcely 
any passages in the poems of Milton are more generally known, 
or more frequently repeated, than those which are httle more 
than muster rolls of names. They are not always more appropri- 30 

1 An East Indian grain. The name is used in one of the tales of the 
Arabian Nights as a password to a robbers' cave. 

2 John Dryden (1631-1700), eminent as poet and prose writer. Among 
his works is a translation of Vergil's ^neid. The reference here is to his 
sacred opera based on Paradise Lost. 



34 MAC AULA Y. 

ate or more melodious than other names. But they are charmed 
names. Every one of them is the first hnk in a long chain of 
associated ideas. Like the dwelling place of our infancy revis- 
ited in manhood, like the song of our country heard in a strange 
5 land, they produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their 
intrinsic value. One transports us back to a remote period of 
history. Another places us among the novel scenes and manners 
of a distant region. A third evokes all the dear classical recol- 
lections of childhood, — the schoolroom, the dog-eared Vergil, ^the 

lo holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings before us the splendid 
phantoms of chivalrous romance, — the trophied hsts, the embroid- 
ered housings, the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the en- 
chanted gardens, the achievements of enamored knights, and the 
smiles of rescued princesses. 

15 In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner more 
happily displayed than in the ''Allegro" and the '' Penseroso."^ 
It is impossible to conceive that the mechanism of language can 
be brought to a more exquisite degree of perfection. These 
V / poems differ from others as ottar of roses differs from ordinary 
^2orose water, the close-packed essence from the thin, diluted mix- 
ture. They are, indeed, not so much poems as collections of 
hints, from each of which the reader is to make out a poem for 
himself. Every epithet is a text for a stanza. 

The '' Comus " and the '' Samson Agonistes " are works which, 

25 though of very different merit, offer some marked points of re- 
semblance. Both are lyric poems in the form of plays. There 
are, perhaps, no two kinds of composition so essentially dissimilar 
as the drama and the ode. { The business of the dramatist is to 
keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his 

30 characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feel- 
ings, the illusion is broken. The effect is as unpleasant as that 

1 Vergil (70-19 B.C.), a pastoral and didactic Roman poet, author of the 
^neid, the greatest Latin epic. 

2 Allegro and Penseroso mean *' mirthful '* and ^^ melancholy." The two 
opposite emotions are beautifully expressed in the poems. 



MILTON, 35 

which is produced on the stage by the voice of a prompter or 
the entrance of a sceneshifter. Hence it was that the tragedies 
of Byron were his least successful performances. They resem- 
ble those pasteboard pictures invented by the friend of children, 
Mr. Newberry, in which a single movable head goes round twenty s 
different bodies, so that the same face looks out upon us, suc- 
cessively, from the uniform of a hussar, the furs of a judge, and 
the rags of a beggar. In all the characters, — patriots and tyrants, 
haters and lovers, — the frown and sneer of Harold ^ were discerni- 
ble in an instant. But this species of egotism, though fatal to the lo 
drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the part of the lyric 
poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to his own emotions. 
^ Between these hostile elements many great men have endeav- 
ored to effect an amalgamation, but never with complete success. 
The Greek drama, on the model of which the '' Samson " was 15 
written, sprang from the ode. The dialogue was ingrafted on 
the chorus, and naturally partook of its character. The genius 
of the greatest of the Athenian dramatists cooperated with the 
circumstances under which tragedy made its first appearance, 
^schylus 2 was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In his time the 20 
Greeks had far more intercourse with the East than in the days 
of Homer ; and they had not yet acquired that immense superi- 
ority in war, in science, and in the arts, which, in the following 
generation, led them to treat the Asiatics with contempt. From 
the narrative of Herodotus^ it should seem that they still looked 25 

1 Childe Harold was the first of his many poems in which Lord Byron 
(1788- 1 824) gave free vent to the cynicism and misanthropy so characteristic 
of them all. 

2 ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three great Greek tragedians, 
flourished in the fifth century B.C., and represent respectively the rise, the 
culmination, and the decline of Greek tragedy. Only a few of their many 
dramas survive. The greatest work of ^schylus, Prometheus Bound, was 
evidently one of Milton's sources of inspiration in writing Paradise Lost, 
although Euripides was his favorite. 

3 Herodotus, born about 484 B.C., was called "the father of history." 
He visited and wrote about most of the then civilized portions of the globe. 



36 MACAULAY. 

up, with the veneration of disciples, to Egypt and Assyria. At 
this period, accordingly, it was natural that the literature of Greece 
should be tinctured with the Oriental style. And that style, we 
think, is discernible in the works of Pindar ^ and ^schylus. The 

5 latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. The Book of 
Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, bears a considerable resem- 
blance to some of his dramas. Considered as plays, his works 
are absurd ; considered as choruses, they are above all praise. 
If, for instance, we examine the address of Clytemnestra to 

lo Agamemnon ^ on his return, or the description of the seven 
Argive chiefs,^ by the principles of dramatic writing, we shall 
instantly condemn them as monstrous. But if we forget the 
characters, and think only of the poetry, we shall admit that it 
has never been surpassed in energy and magnificence. Sophocles 

15 made the Greek drama as dramatic as was consistent with its 
original form. His portraits of men have a sort of similarity ; 
but it is the similarity not of a painting, but of a bas-relief. It 
suggests a resemblance ; but it does not produce an illusion. 
Euripides attempted to carry the reform further. But it was a 

20 task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. Instead 
of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. 
He substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good odes. 
( Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly ; much 
more highly than, in oiur opinion, Euripides deserved. Indeed, 

25 the caresses which this partiality leads our countryman to bestow 
on '' sad Electra's ^ poet," sometimes remind us of the beautiful 

1 Pindar, born about 521 B.C., was the greatest of Greek lyric poets. He 
wrote hymns to the gods, triumphal odes, choric songs, etc., in an elevated, 
but rather abrupt and obscure, style. 

2 One of the Greek heroes of Homer's Iliad. Clytemnestra, his wife, con- 
spiring with her lover, slew him on his return from Troy. 

3 These were Polynices, son of CEdipus, his father-in-law, King Adrastus 
of Argos, and five other princes, with whom he made war upon Thebes when 
deprived of his share in its government. The story is told in The Seven 
against Thebes, one of the dramas of y^schylus. 

^ Electra is the name of one of the plays of Euripides. 



MILTON, 37 

Queen of Fairyland kissing the long ears of Bottom. ^ At all 
events, there can be no doubt that this veneration for the Athe- 
nian, whether just or not, was injurious to the '* Samson Agonis- 
tes." Had Milton taken ^schylus for his model, he would have 
given himself up to the lyric inspiration, and poured out pro- s 
fusely all the treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought 
on those dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work ren- 
dered it impossible to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile 
things in their own nature inconsistent, he has failed, as every 
one else must have failed. We cannot identify ourselves with lo 
the characters, as in a good play. We cannot identify ourselves 
with the poet, as in a good ode. The conflicting ingredients, 
like an acid and an alkali mixed, neutralize each other. We are 
by no means insensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, to 
the severe dignity of the style, the graceful and pathetic solem- is 
nity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric melody 
which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But 
we think it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius 
of Milton. 

The " Comus " is framed on the model of the Italian masque,^ 20 
as the '^ Samson " is framed on the model of the Greek tragedy. 
It is certainly the noblest performance of the kind which exists in 
any language. It is as far superior to the ''Faithful Shepherd- 
ess "^ as the '' Faithful Shepherdess " is to the "Aminta,"^ or the 
"Aminta" to the ''Pastor Fido."^ It was well for Milton that 25 
he had here no Euripides to mislead him.. He understood and 

1 One of the *^ mechanics " in Midsummer-Night's Dream, upon whom 
Oberon, king of the fairies, had caused an ass's head to be set, and with 
whom, for spite, he makes his queen, Titania, fall in love. 

2 A dramatic entertainment in vogue in England at the end of the sixteenth, 
and beginning of the seventeenth, century, acted by imaginary or allegorical 
personages. Ben Jonson and Fletcher have left many beautiful examples of 
the masque. 

3 A pastoral drama by John Fletcher (i 579-1625). The Aminta and II 
Pastor Fido are poems of the same character, written in Italian, the one by 
Tasso (1544-95), the other by Guarini (i 537-1612). 



38 M AC AULA Y, 

loved the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it 
the same veneration which he entertained for the remains of 
Athenian and Roman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and 
endearing recollections. The faults, moreover, of his Italian 

s predecessors were of a kind to which his mind had a deadly an- 
tipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a 
bald style ; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His Muse 
had no objection to a russet attire ; but she turned with disgust 
from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags 

lo of a chimney sweeper on May Day. Whatever ornaments she 
wears are of massive gold, not only dazzhng to the sight, but 
capable of standing the severest test of the crucible. 

Milton attended in the '' Comus " to the distinction which he 
afterwards neglected in the '' Samson." He made his masque 

15 what it ought to be, essentially lyrical, and dramatic only in sem- 
' blance. He has not attempted a fruitless struggle against a de- 
fect inherent in the nature of that species of composition ; and 
he has therefore succeeded, wherever success was not impossible. 
The speeches must be read as majestic sohloquies ; and he who 

20 so reads them will be enraptured with their eloquence, their sub- 
limity, and their music. The interruptions of the dialogue, how- 
ever, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break the illusion 
of the reader. The finest passages are those which are lyric in 
form as well as in spirit. '^ I should much commend," says the 

25 excellent Sir Henry Wotton 1 in a letter to Milton, '' the tragical 
part, if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique deli- 
cacy in your songs and odes, whereunto, I must plainly confess 
to you, I have seen yet nothing parallel in our language." The 
criticism was just. It is when Milton escapes from the shackles 

30 of the dialogue, when he is discharged from the labor of uniting 
two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty to indulge his choral 
raptures without reserve, that he rises even above himself. Then, 
like his own Good Genius bursting from the earthly form and 

1 An accomplished scholar and poet (i 568-1639). 



MILTON, 39 

weeds of Thyrsis,^ he stands forth in celestial freedom and 
beauty; he seems to cry exultingly, — 

" Now my task is smoothly done, 
I can fly, or I can run/'^ 

to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the ely- s 
sian ^ dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard 
and cassia, which the musky wings of the zephyr scatter through 
the cedared alleys of the Hesperides.^ 

There are several of the minor poems of Milton on which we 
would willingly make a few remarks. Still more willingly would lo 
we enter into a detailed examination of that admirable poem, 
the ''Paradise Regained," which, strangely enough, is scarcely 
ever mentioned except as an instance of the blindness of the 
parental affection which men of letters bear towards the offspring 
of their intellects. That Milton was mistaken in preferring this is 
work, excellent as it is, to the '' Paradise Lost," we readily ad- 
mit. But we are sure that the superiority of the '' Paradise Lost " 
to the '' Paradise Regained " is not more decided than the su- 
periority of the '' Paradise Regained " to every poem which has 
since made its appearance. Our limits, however, prevent us 20 
from discussing the point at length. We hasten on to that ex- 
traordinary production which the general suffrage of critics has 
placed in the highest class of human compositions. 

The only poem of modern times which can be compared with 
the ''Paradise Lost" is the "Divine Comedy."^ The subject 25 

1 A character in the Comus, really a spirit, but disguised as a shepherd. 

2 Comus, lines 1012, 1013. 

3 The Elysian Fields were the abode of the blessed spirits in the Hades 
of the ancient Greeks. 

4 In Greek mythology, daughters of Hesperus. The garden in which 
they guarded the golden apples presented to Juno on her marriage with 
Jupiter was fabled to lie on the extreme verge of the Western ocean. 

5 The religious poem of Dante ( 1265-132 1), the greatest of the Italian 
poets. He was born in Florence, from which city he was banished by a 
political faction, and died in exil^t 



40 MACAULAY, 

of Milton, in some points, resembled that of Dante ; but he has 
treated it in a widely different manner. We cannot, we think, 
better illustrate our opinion respecting our own great poet, than 
by contrasting him with the father of Tuscan literature. 
5 The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante as the hiero- 
glyphics 1 of Egypt differed from the picture writing of Mexico. 
The images which Dante employs speak for themselves ; they 
stand simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a signifi- 
cation which is often discernible only to the initiated. (Their 

lo value depends less on what they directly represent than on what 
they remotely suggest, j However strange, however grotesque, 
may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to describe, he 
never shrinks from describing it. He gives us the shape, the 
color, the sound, the smell, the taste ; he counts the numbers ; he 

15 measures the size. His similes are the illustrations of a traveler. 
Unhke those of other poets, and especially of Milton, they are 
introduced in a plain, businesslike manner ; not for the sake of 
any beauty in the objects from which they are drawn; not for 
the sake of any ornament which they may impart to the poem ; 

2o but simply in order to make the meaning of the writer as clear 
to the reader as it is to himself. The ruins of the precipice which 
led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell were like those of 
the rock which fell into the Adige ^ on the south of Trent. The 
cataract of Phlegethon^ was like that of Aqua Cheta at the 

25 monastery of St. Benedict.^ The place where the heretics were 

1 Sacred writings or inscriptions on the monuments in Egypt, by means of 
which their history, civil and religious calendars, deeds, etc., were recorded. 
In Mexico pictures of animals, plants, etc., instead of signs, were used for 
the same purpose. 

2 The Adige, on which the city of Trent is situated, is a river of the 
Tyrol and northern Italy, flow^ing into the Adriatic. 

3 One of the mythical rivers of the infernal regions, whose waves were 
torrents of fire. 

4 Founder of the Benedictine Order of monks, and of Western monasti- 
cism, born about A.D. 480. His famous monastery was on Monte Cassino, 
about midw^ay between Rome and Naples. 



MILTON, 41 

confined in burning tombs resembled the vast cemetery of 
Arles.i 

Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante the dim 
intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The Eng- 
lish poet has never thought of taking the measure of Satan. He s 
gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one passage the 
fiend lies stretched out, huge in length, floating many a rood, 
equal in size to the earthborn enemies of Jove, or to the sea 
monster which the mariner mistakes for an island. When he 
addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels, he stands 10 
like Teneriffe 2 or Atlas : ^ his stature reaches the sky. Contrast 
with these descriptions the lines in which Dante has described 
the gigantic specter of Nimrod. '' His face seemed to me as 
long and as broad as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome ; and his 
other limbs were in proportion ; so that the bank, which con- 15 
cealed him from the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so 
much of him, that three tall Germans would in vain have at- 
tempted to reach to his hair." We are sensible that we do 
no justice to the admirable style of the Florentine poet. But 
Mr. Gary's translation is not at hand ; and our version, however 20 
rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning. 

Once more, compare the lazar house ^ in the eleventh book of 
the " Paradise Lost" with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. 
Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indis- 
tinct but solemn and tremendous imagery : Despair hurrying 25 
from couch to couch to mock the wretches with his attendance ; 
Death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of suppHcations, 

1 A town of France, in Provence, in which there is a well-preserved amphi- 
theater, and other remains of Roman occupation. 

2 A volcano on an island of the same name, off the coast of Africa, 12,200 
feet above sea level. 

3 A great mountain system in northern Africa, its greatest altitude being 
above 13,000 feet. 

* Lazar house (from Lazarus), a public hospital for the reception of vic- 
tims of contagious or loathsome diseases. 



42 MACAULAY, 

delaying to strike. What says Dante? '' There was such a moan 
there as there would be if all the sick who, between July and 
September, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan 
swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit together ; and such a 
5 stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs." 
We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of settling 
precedency between two such writers. Each in his own depart- 
ment is incomparable; and .each, we may remark, has wisely, or 
fortunately, taken a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent 

10 to the greatest advantage. The '^ Divine Cotnedy " is a per- 
sonal narrative. Dante is the eyewitness and earwitness of that 
which he relates. He is the very man who has heard the tor- 
mented spirits crying out for the second death ; who has read the 
dusky characters ^ on the portal within which there is no hope ; 

15 who has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon; 2, who 
has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia 
and Draghignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy 
sides of Lucifer. His own feet have chmbed the mountain of 
expiation. His own brow has been marked by the purifying 

20 angel. The reader would throw aside such a tale in incredulous 
disgust, unless it were told with the strongest air of veracity; 
with a sobriety even in its horrors ; with the greatest precision 
and multiplicity in its details. The narrative of Milton in this 
respect differs from that of Dante, as the adventures of Amadis^ 

25 differ from those of Gulliver.^ The author of '' Amadis " would 

1 These were the characters: '* All hope abandon, ye who enter here." 
— Dante's Inferno, Canto III. 

2 Known as Medusa; according to Homer, a female monster, one of three 
sisters, whose head was covered with serpents instead of hair, and with so 
frightful an aspect that whoever looked on her was changed into stone. 

3 The hero of one of the early prose romances of chivalry, Amadis of 
Gaul, written by a Portuguese gentleman about the middle of the fourteenth 
century. 

4 Lemuel Gulliver, whose fictitious travels and adventures in the strange 
lands of LilUput, Brobdingnag, etc., were made the vehicle of bitter social 
and political satire by Dean Swift (i 667-1 745). 



MILTON, 43 

have made his book ridiculous if he had introduced those minute 
particulars which give such a charm to the work of Swift ; the 
nautical observations, the affected delicacy about names, the offi- 
cial documents transcribed at full length, and all the unmeaning 
gossip and scandal of the court, springing out of nothing, and 5 
tending to nothing. We are not shocked at being told that a 
man who lived, nobody knows when, saw many very strange 
sights, and we can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of 
the romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident at 
Rotherhithe, tells us of pygmies and giants, flying islands, and 10 
philosophizing horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches 
could produce for a single moment a deception on the imagi- 
nation. 

Of all the poets who have introduced into their works the 
agency of supernatural beings, Milton has succeeded best. Here is 
Dante decidedly yields to him ; and as this is a point on which 
many rash and ill-considered judgments have been pronounced, 
we feel inclined to dwell on it a little longer. -^The most fatal 
error which a poet can possibly commit in the management of 
his machinery is that of attempting to philosophize too much. 20 
Milton has been often censured for ascribing to spirits many 
functions of which spirits must be incapable. But these objec- 
tions, though sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we venture 
to say^ in profound ignorance of the art of poetry. ) 

What is spirit ? What are our own minds, the portion of spirit 25 
with which we are best acquainted? We observe certain phe- 
nomena. We cannot explain them into material causes. We 
therefore infer that there exists something which is not material. 
But of this something we have no idea. We can define it only 
by negatives. We can reason about it only by symbols. ( We use 30 
the word, but we have no image of the thing; and the business 
of poetry is with images, and not with words. The poet uses 
words indeed ; but they are merely the instruments of his art, 
not its objects. They are the materials which he is to dispose 
in such a manner as to present a picture to the mental eye. And 35 



44 MACAULAY. 

if they are not so disposed, they are no more entitled to be called 
poetry than a bale of canvas and a box of colors to be called a 
painting. 

Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass 

s of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multi- 
tude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no 
other principle. The first inhabitants of Greece, there is reason 
to believe, worshiped one invisible Deity. But the necessity 
of having something more definite to adore produced, in a few 

lo centuries, the innumerable crowd of gods and goddesses. In like 
manner the ancient Persians^ thought it impious to exhibit the 
Creator under a human form. Yet even these transferred to the 
sun the worship which, in speculation, they considered due only 
to the Supreme Mind. The history of the Jews is the record of 

15 a continued struggle between pure Theism, supported by the 
most terrible sanctions, and the strangely fascinating desire of 
having some visible and tangible object of adoration. Perhaps 
none of the secondary causes which Gibbon 2 has assigned for 
the rapidity with which Christianity spread over the world, while 

20 Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte, operated more power- 
fully than this feehng. God, the uncreated, the incomprehensi- 
ble, the invisible, attracted few worshipers. * A philosopher might 
admire so noble a conception ; but the crowd turned away in dis- 
gust from words which presented no image to their minds. J It 

25 was before Deity, embodied in a human form, walking among 
men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, 
weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on 
the cross, that the prejudices of the Synagogue,^ and the doubts 

1 The religion of the ancient Persians was a dualistic creed, called Zoro- 
asticism, from its founder, which asserted the existence of two creative spir- 
its, one good, the other evil, but the triumph, ultimately, of the good. 
y 2 Edward Gibbon (1737-94), author of the History of the Decline and 
/ Fall of the Roman Empire. 

3 A Greek word, meaning " a place of assembly." The name was given 
to the Jewish place of worship. 



MILTON, 45 

of the Academy,! and the pride of the Portico,^ and the fasces 
of the Lictor,^ and the swords of thirty legions, were humbled in 
the dust. Soon after Christianity had achieved its triumph, the 
principle which had assisted it began to corrupt it. It became 
a new paganism. Patron saints assumed the offices of house- s 
hold gods. St. George^ took the place of Mars.^ St. Elmo^ 
consoled the mariner for the loss of Castor and Pollux. The 
Virgin Mother and Cecilia"^ succeeded to Venus ^ and the 
Muses.^ The fascination of sex and loveliness was again joined 
to that of celestial dignity ; and the homage of chivalry was lo 
blended with that of religion.. Reformers have often made a 
stand against these feelings ; but never with more than apparent 
and partial success. The men who demolished the images in 
cathedrals have not always been able to demohsh those which 
were enshrined in their minds. It would not be difficult to is 
show that in politics the same rule holds good. Doctrines, we 
are afraid, must generally be embodied before they can excite a 
strong public feeling. The multitude is more easily interested 
for the most unmeaning badge, or the most insignificant name, 
than for the most important principle. 20 

1 A garden in Athens, so called from Academos, its original owner, where 
Socrates discoursed and Plato taught. 

2 The Portico was a painted porch, or stoa, in Athens, where Zeno taught 
his disciples, the Stoics. 

3 A public officer in ancient Rome, in attendance upon the chief magis- 
trates to enforce their authority. He carried the fasces^ a bundle of rods, 
as emblem of his office. 

^ The tutelary saint of England, and the especial patron of chivalry. 

5 The god of war. 

6 St. Elmo's fire was the name given to the electric light often seen about 
the masts of ships in stormy weather. The Romans ascribed it to Castor 
and Pollux, twin divinities of their mythology. 

'^ St. Cecilia, the patroness of music in the church, who suffered martyr- 
dom about A.D. 230. 

8 The goddess of love. 

^ The Muses, nine in number, were the goddesses of poetry, music, danc 
ing, painting, etc. 



46 MACAULAY. 

From these considerations, we infer that no poet who should 
affect that metaphysical accuracy for the want of which Milton 
has been blamed, would escape a disgraceful failure. Still, how- 
ever, there was another extreme which, though far less danger- 

5 ous, was also to be avoided. ^ The imaginations of men are in a 
great measure under the control of their opinions. The most 
exquisite art of poetical coloring can produce no illusion when 
it is employed to represent that which is at once perceived to be 
incongruous and absurd. Milton wrote in an age of philoso- 

lo phers and theologians. ! It was necessary, therefore, for him 
to abstain from giving such a shock to their understandings as 
might break the charm which it was his object to throw over 
their imaginations. This is the real explanation of the indistinct- 
ness and inconsistency with which he has often been reproached. 

IS Dr. Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely necessary that 
the spirits should be clothed with material forms. '' But," says 
he, '^ the poet should have secured the consistency of his system 
by keeping immateriality out of sight, and seducing the reader to 
drop it from his thoughts." This is easily said ; but what if Mil- 

20 ton could not seduce his readers to drop immateriality from their 
thoughts? What if the contrary opinion had taken so full a 
possession of the minds of men as to leave no room even for the 
half beHef which poetry requires? Such we suspect to have been 
the case. It was impossible for the poet to adopt altogether the 

25 material or the immaterial system. He therefore took his stand 
on the debatable ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. He 
has doubtless, by so doing, laid himself open to the charge of 
inconsistency. But, though philosophically in the wrong, we 
cannot but believe that he was poetically in the right. This 

30 task, which almost any other writer would have found impracti- 
cable, was easy to him. The peculiar art which he possessed of 
communicating his meaning circuitously through a long succes- 
sion of associated ideas, and of intimating more than he ex- 
pressed, enabled him to disguise those incongruities which he 

35 could not avoid, v 

} 



MILTON, 47 

/ Poetry which relates to the beings of another world ought to 
be at once mysterious and picturesque. That of Milton is so. 
That of Dante is picturesque, indeed, beyond any that ever was 
written. Its effect approaches to that produced by the pencil or 
the chisel. But it is picturesque to the exclusion of all mystery, s 
This is a fault on the right side, a fault inseparable from the 
plan of Dante's poem, which, as we have already observed, ren- 
dered the utmost accuracy of description necessary. Still it is a 
fault. The supernatural agents excite an interest ; but it is not 
the interest which is proper to supernatural agents. We feel that lo 
we could talk to the ghosts and demons, without any emotion of 
unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan,^ ask them to supper, 
and eat heartily in their company. Dante's angels are good men 
with wings. His devils are spiteful, ugly executioners. His 
dead men are merely living men in strange situations. The is 
scene which passes between the poet and Farinata is justly cele- 
brated. Still, Farinata in the burning tomb is exactly what Fari- 
nata would have been at an aiUo dafer' Nothing can be more 
touching than the first interview of Dante and Beatrice.^ Yet 
what is it, but a lovely woman chiding, with sweet, austere com- 20 
posure, the lover for whose affection she is grateful, but whose 
vices she reprobates? The feelings which give the passage its 
charm would suit the streets of Florence as well as the summit 
of the Mount of Purgatory. 

The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other 25^ 
writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. 
They are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked 

1 A character in Mozart's opera, Don Giovanni, who invites a statue (of 
the Commendatore) to sup with him, and is amazed when the statue keeps 
the appointment. 

2 '* Act of the faith," the name given to the ceremony in use in Spain and 
Portugal at the execution of heretics by the Inquisition. 

3 Beatrice Portinari, whom Dante first met and loved in 1274, when he 
was but nine years old, and she about the same age, and who, in his Vision, 
was his guide into Paradise. 



48 MACAULAY, 

men. They are not ugly beasts. They have no horns, no tails, 
none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso ^ and Klopstock.^ They have 
just enough in common with human nature to be intelhgible to 
human beings. Their characters are, hke their forms, marked 

5 by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated 
to gigantic dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom. 

Perhaps the gods and demons of ^schylus may best bear a 
comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. The style of 
the Athenian had, as w^e have remarked, something of the Ori- 

lo ental character ; and the same peculiarity may be traced in his 
mythology. It has nothing of the amenity and elegance which 
we generally find in the superstitions of Greece. All is rugged, 
barbaric, and colossal. The legends of ^schylus seem to har- 
monize less with the fragrant groves and graceful porticos in 

IS which his countrymen paid their vows to the God of Light ^ and 
Goddess of Desire,^ than with those huge and grotesque laby- 
rinths of eternal granite in which Egypt enshrined her mystic 
Osiris,^ or in which Hindostan still bows down to her seven- 
headed idols. His favorite gods are those of the elder genera- 

20 tion, the sons of heaven and earth, compared with whom Jupiter 
himself was a stripling and an upstart, — the gigantic Titans,^ and 
the inexorable Furies.'^ Foremost among his creations of this 
class stands Prometheus,^ half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of 

1 An Italian poet (1544-95), who wrote romantic and pastoral poems and 
dramas, but is chiefly known by his great epic, Jerusalem Delivered. 

2 A German poet (i 724-1803), who wrote an epic, The Messiah, and 
dramatic poems on subjects taken from the Old Testament. 

3 Apollo. 4 Venus. 

5 The greatest of the Egyptian gods, who judged the dead in the nether 
world. 

6 In classical mythology, a race of giants who warred against Jupiter. 

7 Deities, avengers of crime, who drove guilty souls into the infernal 
world. 

8 Prometheus stole fire from heaven for the use and benefit of man, and 
was chained to the Caucasus Mountains by Jupiter, where an eagle fed upon 
his liver. 



MILTON, 49 

man, the sullen and implacable enemy of heaven. Prometheus 
bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the Satan of 
Milton. In both we find the same impatience of control, the 
same ferocity, the same unconquerable pride. In both charac- 
ters, also, are mingled, though in very different proportions, some s 
kind and generous feehngs. Prometheus, however, is hardly 
superhuman enough. He talks too much of his chains and his 
uneasy posture ; he is rather too much depressed and agitated. 
His resolution seems to depend on the knowledge which he 
possesses that he holds the fate of his torturer in his hands, and lo 
that the hour of his release will surely come. But Satan is a 
creature of another sphere. The might of his intellectual nature 
is victorious over the extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which 
cannot be conceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and 
even exults. Against the sword of Michael, against the thunder is 
of Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the marl burning with 
solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity of unintermitted 
misery, his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its own innate 
energies, requiring no support from anything external, nor even 
from hope itself. 20 

To return for a moment to the parallel which we have been 
attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, we would add 
that the poetry of these great men has in a considerable degree 
taken its character from their moral qualities. They are not 
egotists. They rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their 25 
readers. They have nothing in common with those modern 
beggars for fame, who extort a pittance from the compassion of 
the inexperienced by exposing the nakedness and sores of their 
minds. Yet it would be difficult to name two writers whose 
works have been more completely, though undesignedly, colored 30 
by their personal feelings. 

The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by lofti- 
ness of spirit ; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every 
line of the '' Divine Comedy " we discern the asperity which is 
produced by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps 35 



5^ MAC AULA Y, 

no work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The 
melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as 
far as at this distance of time can be judged, the effect of ex- 
ternal circumstances. It was from within. Neither love nor 

5 glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the hope of heaven, 
could dispel it. It turned every consolation and every pleasure 
into its own nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of 
which the intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible even 
in its honey. His mind was, in the noble language of the He- 

lo brew poet, '' a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where 
the light was as darkness." The gloom of his character discolors 
all the passions of men, and all the face of nature, and tinges 
with its own livid hue the flowers of Paradise and the glories 
of the eternal throne. All the portraits of him are singularly 

15 characteristic. No person can look on the features, noble even 
to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and 
woeful stare of the eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of 
the lip, and doubt that they belong to a man too proud and too 
sensitive to be happy. 

20 Milton was, hke Dante, a statesman and a lover ; and, like 
Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. He 
had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home, 
and the prosperity of his party. Of the great men by whom he 
had been distinguished at his entrance into Hfe, some had been 

25 taken away from the evil to come ; some had carried into for- 
eign climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression ; some 
were pining in dungeons ; and some had poured forth their blood 
on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient 
talent to clothe the thoughts of a pander in the style of a bell- 

30 man, were now the favorite writers of the sovereign ^ and of the 
public. It was a loathsome herd, which could be compared to 
nothing so fitly as to the rabble of " Comus,*' grotesque mon- 
sters, half bestial, half human, dropping with wine, bloated with 
gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these that fair 

1 Charles II. 



MILTON. 51 

Muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the masque, lofty, spot- 
less, and serene, to be chattered at, and pointed at, and grinned 
at, by the whole rout of satyrs and gobhns. If ever despond- 
ency and asperity could be excused in any man, they might have 
been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame s 
every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor pen- 
ury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor 
abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his 
sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have 
been high, but they were singularly equable. His temper was 10 
serious, perhaps stern ; but it was a temper which no sufferings 
could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was when, on the eve 
of great events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of 
health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and 
glowing with patriotic hopes, such it continued to be when, 15 
after having experienced every calamity which is incident to our 
nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel 
to die. 

Hence it was, that, though he wrote the ^' Paradise Lost " at 
a time of life when images of beauty and tenderness are in gen- 20 
eral beginning to fade, even from those minds in which they have 
not been effaced by anxiety and disappointment, he adorned it 
with all that is most lovely and delightful in the physical and in 
the moral world. Neither Theocritus ^ nor Ariosto ^ had a finer 
or a more healthful sense of the pleasantness of external objects, 25 
or loved better to luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the 
songs of nightingales, the juice of summer fruits, and the cool- 
ness of shady fountains. His conception of love unites all the 
voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all the gallantry of 
the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and quiet affection of 30 
an Enghsh fireside. His poetry reminds us of the miracles of 

1 The greatest of the Greek idyllic and pastoral poets, a Syracusan by 
birth, who flourished about the end of the third century B.C. 

2 Ludovico Ariosta (1474-1533), an Italian poet, author of many lyrical 
poems, and of Orlando Furioso, a fantastic story of chivalry. 



52 MACAULAY. 

Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairyland, are 
embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The 
roses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche. 
Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton may be 
5 found in all his works ; but it is most strongly displayed in the 
Sonnets. Those remarkable poems have been undervalued by 
critics who have not understood their nature. They have no 
epigrammatic point. There is none of the ingenuity of Filicaja ^ 
in the thought, none of the hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch 

lo in the style. They are simple but majestic records of the feel- 
ings of the poet ; as little tricked out for the pubhc eye as his 
diary would have been. A victory, an expected attack upon the 
city, a momentary fit of depression or exultation, a jest thrown 
out against one of his books, a dream which for a short time 

15 restored to him that beautiful face over which the grave had 
closed forever, led him to musings which, without effort, shaped 
themselves into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity of 
style which characterize these little pieces remind us of the Greek 
Anthology,^ or perhaps still more of the Collects ^ of the English 

20 Liturgy. The noble poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is 
strictly a collect in verse. 

The Sonnets are more or less striking, according as the occa- 
sions which gave birth to them are more or less interesting. But 
they are, almost without exception, dignified by a sobriety and 

25 greatness of mind to which we know not where to look for a 
parallel. It would, indeed, be scarcely safe to draw any decided 
inferences as to the character of a writer from passages directly 
egotistical. But the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton, 

1 Filicaja (1642-1707), an Italian lyric poet, who celebrated, in a series 
of odes, the triumph of the Christians in the defeat of the Turks at Vienna, 
in 1683. 

2 A collection of several thousand short poems, among the most valuable 
remains of ancient Greek literature. 

3 A collect is a form of prayer used in the Liturgies, or orders of wor- 
ship, in the Western churches. 



MILTON. 53 

though perhaps most strongly marked in those parts of his works 
which treat of his personal feelings, are distinguishable in every 
page, and impart to all his writings, prose and poetry, Enghsh, 
Latin, and ItaUan, a strong family likeness. 

His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a s 
man of a spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful. He 
lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of man- 
kind ; at the very crisis of the great conflict between Oromasdes 
and ArimaneSji liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. 
That great battle was fought for no single generation, for no lo 
single land. The destinies of the human race were staked on 
the same cast with the freedom of the English people. Then 
were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have since 
worked their way into the depths of the American forests, which 
have roused Greece from the slavery and degradation of two 15 
thousand years, and which, from one end of Europe to the other, 
have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, 
and loosed the knees of the oppressors with an unwonted fear. 

Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence, 
Milton was the most devoted and eloquent literary champion. 20 
We need not say how much we admire his public conduct. But 
we cannot disguise from ourselves that a large portion of his 
countrymen still think it unjustifiable. The civil war, indeed, 
has been more discussed, and is less understood, than any event 
in English history. The friends of liberty labored under the 25 
disadvantage of which the lion in the fable ^ complained so 
bitterly. Though they were the conquerors, their enemies were 

1 Oromasdes and Arimanes, the good and evil geniuses of the ancient 
Persian religion. 

2 This fable is to the effect that a man and a lion, traveling through a for- 
est, and boasting of their respective strength and prowess, came to a statue 
of a man strangling a lion, on which the man remarked, " See how strong 
we are, and how we can prevail over you." To this the king of beasts re- 
plied, " Yes, but if the statue had been made by one of us, the man would 
have been under the lion's paw." 



54 M AC AULA Y. 

the painters. As a body, the Roundheads ^ had done their ut- 
most to decry and ruin literature ; and hterature was even with 
them, as, in the long run, it always is with its enemies. The 
best book on their side of the question is the charming narrative 

5 of Mrs. Hutchinson. 2 May's '' History of the Parhament " ^ is 
good ; but it breaks off at the most interesting crisis of the strug- 
gle. The performance of Ludlow ^ is fooHsh and violent ; and 
most of the later writers who have espoused the same cause, 
Oldmixon,^ for instance, and Catherine Macaulay,* have, to say 

lo the least, been more distinguished by zeal than either by candor 
or by skill. On the other side are the most authoritative and the 
most popular historical works in our language, — that of Claren- 
don ^ and that of Hume.^ The former is not only ably written and 
full of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity and 

IS sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors with which 
it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose fascinating narrative 
the great mass of the reading public are still contented to take 
their opinions, hated religion so much that he hated liberty for 
having been allied with religion, and has pleaded the cause of 

2o tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate, while affecting the 
impartiality of a judge. 

The public conduct of Milton must be approved or con- 
demned, according as the resistance of the people to Charles I 

1 A name given in derision by the Cavalier or Royalist party in the civil 
war to the Puritans and Independents. 

2 Mrs. Hutchinson ( 1620-died after 1675) wrote a memoir of her husband, 
Colonel Hutchinson, who was in the Parliamentary army in the civil war. 

3 May's work, printed in 1647, treats of only a part of the civil war. He 
was secretary to the Parliament. 

4 General Ludlow wrote memoirs of Cromwell ; John Oldmixon (1673- 
1742), a History of England (1730-39); and Mrs. Macaulay (1731-91), a 
history from the reign of James I to the accession of the House of Hanover. 

5 Earl of Clarendon (1609-74), a Royalist statesman of the time of 
Charles I and Charles II, who wrote a History of the Civil Wars. 

6 David Hume (17 11-76), a famous philosopher, and author of a History 
of England. 



MILTOK. 55 

shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall therefore 
make no apology for dedicating a few pages to the discussion 
of that interesting and most important question. We shall not 
argue it on general grounds. We shall not recur to those pri- 
mary principles from which the claim of any government to the s 
obedience of its subjects is to be deduced. We are entitled to 
that vantage ground ; but we will relinquish it. We are, on this 
point, so confident of superiority, that we are not unwilling to 
imitate the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights who 
vowed to joust without helmet or shield against all enemies, and lo 
to give their antagonists the advantage of sun and wind. We 
will take the naked constitutional question. W^e confidently 
aflfirm, that every reason which can be urged in favor of the 
Revolution of 1688 ^ may be urged with at least equal force in 
favor of what is called the Great Rebellion. 15 

In one respect only, we think, can the warmest admirers of 
Charles venture to say that he was a better sovereign than his 
son. He was not, in name and profession, a Papist ; we say in 
name and profession, because both Charles himself and his crea- 
ture Laud,2 while they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, 20 
retained all its worst vices, — a complete subjection of reason 
to authority, a weak preference of form to substance, a childish 
passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration for the priestly 
character, and, above all, a merciless intolerance. This, how- 
ever, we waive. We will concede that Charles was a good 25 
Protestant ; but we say that his Protestantism does not make the 
shghtest distinction between his case and that of James. 

The principles of the Revolution have often been grossly mis- 
represented, and never more than in the course of the present 
year.3 There is a certain class of men who, while they profess to 30 

1 The revolution in which James II, brother of Charles II, was driven 
from the throne by William, Prince of Orange, who succeeded him. 

2 William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, who supported Charles I in 
many of his oppressive measures in church matters. He was beheaded on 
Tower Hill in 1645. 3 1825. 



$6 M AC AULA Y, 

hold in reverence the great names and great actions of former 
times, never look at them for any other purpose than in order to 
find in them some excuse for existing abuses. In every vener- 
able precedent they pass by what is essential, and take only what 

5 is accidental : they keep out of sight what is beneficial, and hold 
up to public imitation all that is defective. If, in any part of 
any great example, there be anything unsound, these flesh flies 
detect it with an unerring instinct, and dart upon it with a rave- 
nous delight. If some good end has been attained in spite of 

lo them, they feel, with their prototype, that their 

^^ Labor must be to pervert that end, 
And out of good still to find means of evil."^ 

To the blessings which England has derived from the Revolu- 
tion these people are utterly insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, 
\s the -solemn recognition of popular rights, — liberty, security, tol- 
1 eration, — all go for nothing with them. One sect^ there was, 
\ which, from unfortunate temporary causes, it was thought neces- 
sary to keep under close restraint. One part of the empire ^ 
there was, so unhappily circumstanced that at that time its misery 
2o was necessary to our happiness, and its slavery to our freedom. 
These are the parts of the Revolution which the politicians of 
whom we speak love to contemplate, and which seem to them 
not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate, the good 
which it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, or 
25 of South America. They stand forth zealots for the doctrine of 
Divine Right,'^ which has now come back to us, like a thief from 
transportation, under the alias of Legitimacy. But mention the 
miseries of Ireland. Then Wilham^ is a hero. Then Somers 

1 Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 164, 165. 

2 The Roman Catholics. 

3 ^* One part of the empire," i.e., Ireland. 

4 See Introduction, p. 11. 

5 William II I^ Prince of Orange, and King of England after James II. I 
He was the son of Mary, daughter of Charles I, 



MILTON. 57 

and Shrewsbury! ^re great men. Then the Revolution is a 
glorious era! The very same persons who, in this country, never 
omit an opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite ^ slan- 
der respecting the Whigs of that period, have no sooner crossed 
St. George's Channel ^ than they begin to fill their bumpers to s 
the glorious and immortal memory. They may truly boast that 
they look not at men, but at measures. So that evil be done, 
. they care not who does it ; the arbitrary Charles or the liberal 
William, Ferdinand the Catholic ^ or Frederick the Protestant.^ 
On such occasions their deadliest opponents may reckon upon lo 
their candid construction. The bold assertions of these people 
have of late impressed a large portion of the public with an 
opinion that James II was expelled simply because he was a 
Catholic, and that the Revolution was essentially a Protestant 
revolution. is 

But this certainly was not the case, nor can any person who 
has acquired more knowledge of the history of those times than 
is to be found in Goldsmith's^ ''Abridgment" believe* that, if 
James had held his own religious opinions without wishing to 
make proselytes, or if, wishing even to make proselytes, he had 20 
contented himself with exerting only his constitutional influence 
for that purpose, the Prince of Orange would ever have been 
invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew their own mean- 
ing; and, if we may beheve them, their hostihty was primarily 
not to Popery, but to tyranny. They did not drive out a tyrant 25 

1 Somers and Shrewsbury were Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State, 
respectively, in the reign of William III. 

2 A term applied to the adherents of James II and his family. 

3 Separating England and Ireland. 

* King of Spain (1452-15 16), who, with his wife Isabella, established the 
Inquisition. 

s Frederick V (1596-1632), Elector Palatine, one of the Protestant princes 
of Germany, and son-in-law of King James I of England. 

6 Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74), contemporary with Dr. Samuel Johnson, 
wrote an abridged History of England. He is best known for his poems, The 
Traveler and The Deserted Village, and his novel, The Vicar of Wakefield. 



58 MACAU LAY, 

because he was a Catholic ; but they excluded Catholics from 
the Crown because they thought them likely to be tyrants. The 
ground on which they, in their famous resolution, declared the 
throne vacant, was this, '' that James had broken the fundamen- 

i tal laws of the kingdom." Every man, therefore, who approves 
of the Revolution of 1688 must hold that the breach of funda- 
mental laws on the part of the sovereign justifies resistance. The 
question, then, is this : Had Charles I broken the fundamental 
laws of England? 

10 No person can answer in the negative unless he refuses credit, 
not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his 
opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest Royalists, and 
to the confessions of the king himself. If there be any truth 
in any historian of any party who has related the events of that 

IS reign, the conduct of Charles, from his accession to the meeting 
of the Long Parliament,^ had been a continued course of oppres- 
sion and treachery. Let those who applaud the Revolution and 
condenyi the Rebellion mention one act of James II to which a 
parallel is not to be found in the history of his father. Let them 

20 lay their fingers on a single article in the Declaration of Right,^ 
presented by the two Houses to William and Mary, which 
Charles is not acknowledged to have violated. He had, accord- 
ing to the testimony of his own friends, usurped the functions of 
the legislature, raised taxes without the consent of Parhament, 

25 and quartered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexa- 
tious manner. Not a single session of Parliament had passed 
without some unconstitutional attack on the freedom of debate. 
The right of petition was grossly violated. Arbitrary judgments, 

1 The Long Parliament was convened in 1640, and so called from its con- 
tinued existence, except for its suspension by Cromwell in 1653 (when it was 
known as the " Rump "), until the Restoration in 1660. 

2 An instrument in which the crimes and errors of the government under 
James II were recited, with a statement of the rights and privileges of Par- 
liament and the people. On solemn assurance that these would be preserved, 
William and Mary were constituted joint rulers of Great Britain. 



MILTON. 59 

exorbitant fines, and unwarranted imprisonments were grievances 
of daily occurrence. If these things do not justify resistance, 
the Revolution was treason ; if they do, the great RebelHon was 
laudable. 

But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures ? Why, after g 
the king had consented to so many reforms and renounced so 
many oppressive prerogatives, did the Parliament continue to 
rise in their demands at the risk of provoking a civil war ? The 
ship money ^ had been given up, the Star Chamber ^ had been 
abohshed, provision had been made for the frequent convocation lo 
and secure deliberation of Parliaments. Why not pursue an end 
confessedly good by peaceable and regular means? We recur 
again to the analogy of the Revolution. Why was James driven 
from the throne? Why was he not retained upon conditions? 
He, too, had offered to call a free Parliament, and to submit to is 
its decision all the matters in dispute. Yet we are in the habit 
of praising our forefathers, who preferred a revolution, a disputed 
succession, a dynasty of strangers^ twenty years of foreign and 
intestine war, a standing army, and a national debt, to the rule, 
however restricted, of a tried and proved tyrant. The Long 20 
Parliament acted on the same principle, and is entitled to the 
same praise. They could not trust the king. He had, no 
doubt, passed salutary laws; but what assurance was there that 
he would not break them? He had renounced oppressive pre- 
rogatives; but where was the security that he would not resume 25 
them? The nation had to deal with a man whom no tie could 
bind ; a man who made and broke promises with equal facility ; a 
man whose honor had been a hundred times pawned, and never 
redeemed. 

Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still stronger 30 
ground than the Convention of 1688. No action of James can 
be compared to the conduct of Charles with respect to the Peti- 
tion of Right.i The Lords and Commons present him with a 

1 See Introduction, p. ii. 



6o MAC AULA Y. 

bill in which the constitutional limits of his power are marked 
out. He hesitates; he evades; at last he bargains to give his 
assent for five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn assent; 
the subsidies are voted ; but no sooner is the tyrant relieved than 
5 he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures which he had 
bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of the 
very act which he had been paid to pass. 

For more than ten years the people had seen the rights which 
were theirs by a double claim, — by immemorial inheritance and 

lo by recent purchase, — infringed by the perfidious king who had 
recognized them. At length circumstances compelled Charles 
to summon another Parliament. Another chance was given to 
our fathers: were they to throw it away as they had thrown 
away the former ? Were they again to be cozened by le Roi le 

15 veut? 1 Were they again to advance their money on pledges 
which had been forfeited over and over again? Were they to 
lay a second Petition of Right at the foot of the throne, to grant 
another lavish aid in exchange for another unmeaning ceremony, 
and then to take their departure, till, after ten years more of 

2o fraud and oppression, their prince should again require a supply, 
and again repay it with a perjury? They were compelled to 
choose whether they would trust a tyrant or conquer him. We 
think that they chose wisely and nobly. 

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other male- 

25 factors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, gen- 
erally decline all controversy about the facts, and content them- 
selves with calling testimony to character. He had so many 
private virtues! And had James II no private virtues? Was 
Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, 

30 destitute of private virtues? And what, after all, are the virtues 
ascribed to Charles? A religious zeal, not more sincere than 
that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few 

1 "The king wishes it," a phrase in which the royal assent to bills in 
Parliament is conveyed. It dates from the time when French was the lan- 
guage of the court. 



MILTON, 6 1 

of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in 
England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! 
A good husband! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of 
persecution, tyranny, and falsehood! 

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath ; and 5 
we are told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him 
of having given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the 
most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates ; and the defense 
is that he took his httle son on his knee, and kissed him ! We 
censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of 10 
Right, after having, for good and valuable consideration, prom- 
ised to observe them ; and we are informed that he was accus- 
tomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning! It is to 
such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke 1 dress, 
his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily 15 
believe, most of his popularity with the present generation. 

For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the common 
phrase, '' a good man, but a bad king." We can as easily con- 
ceive a good man and an unnatural father, or a good man and 
a treacherous friend. We cannot, in estimating the character of 20 
an individual, leave out of our consideration his conduct in the 
most important of all human relations ; and if in that relation we 
find him to have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, wx shall take 
the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of all his temperance 
at table, and all his regularity at chapel. 2 

We cannot refrain from adding a few words respecting a topic 
on which the defenders of Charles are fond of dwelling. If, 
they say, he governed his people ill, he at least governed them 
after the example of his predecessors. If he violated their privi- 
leges, it was because those privileges had not been accurately 30 
defined. No act of oppression has ever been imputed to him 

1 Properly spelled Van Dyck, — a distinguished portrait painter (1599- 
1641). He was born at Antwerp, but lived for most of his life in England, 
where he painted portraits of many of the historical characters of Charles's 
court. 



62 MAC AULA Y, 

which has not a parallel in the annals of the Tudors.^ This 
point Hume has labored, with an art which is as discreditable in 
a historical work as it would be admirable in a forensic address. 
The answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles had assented 
s to the Petition of Right. He had renounced the oppressive 
powers said to have been exercised by his predecessors, and he 
had renounced them for money. He was not entitled to set up 
his antiquated claims against his own recent release. 

These arguments are so obvious that it may seem superfluous 

lo to -dwell upon them; but those who have observed how much 
the events of that time are misrepresented and misunderstood, 
will not blame us for stating the case simply. It is a case of 
which the simplest statement is the strongest. 

The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose to take 

IS issue on the great points of the question. They content them- 
selves with exposing some of the crimes and follies to which 
public commotions necessarily give birth. They bewail the un- 
merited fate of Strafford.2 They execrate the lawless violence 
of the army. They laugh at the scriptural names of the preach- 

20 ers. Major generals fleecing their districts ; soldiers reveling on 
the spoils of a ruined peasantry ; upstarts, enriched by the public 
plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides and heredi- 
tary trees of the old gentry ; boys smashing the beautiful win- 
dows of cathedrals; Quakers^ riding naked through the market 

25 place ; Fifth-monarchy men ^ shouting for King Jesus ; agitators 

1 A dynasty of English rulers, beginning with Henry VII, and occupy- 
ing the throne until succeeded by the Stuarts, Queen Elizabeth being the last 
Tudor sovereign. 

2 Thomas \Yentworth, Earl of Strafford (i 593-1641), a leading member 
at first of the opposition in Parliament to Charles I. He subsequently joined 
the king's party, and became his chief counselor and adviser in all his acts of 
usurpation and tyranny. He was executed on Tower Hill in 1641. 

3 A religious society originally known as Friends, founded by George 
Fox about 1648. The name Quaker was afterwards applied to them in con- 
tempt. 

4 Fifth-monarchy men were sectaries who believed that they were to 



MILTON, ^-^ 

lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag ; — all these, 
they tell us, were the offspring of the Great Rebellion. 

Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this matter. These 
charges, were they infinitely more important, would not alter our 
opinion of an event which alone has made us to differ from the 5 
slaves who crouch beneath despotic scepters. Many evils, no 
doubt, were produced by the civil war. They were the price of 
our liberty. Has the acquisition been worth the sacrifice ? It 
is the nature of the devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body 
which he leaves. Are the miseries of continued possession less 10 
horrible than the struggles of the tremendous exorcism? 

If it were possible that a people brought up under an intoler- 
ant and arbitrary system could subvert that system without acts 
of cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic power would 
be removed. We should, in that case, be compelled to acknowl- 15 
edge that it at least produces no pernicious effects on the intel- 
lectual and moral character of a nation. We deplore the out- 
rages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the 
outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was neces- 
sary. The violence of those outrages will always be proportion- 20 
ed to the ferocity and ignorance of the people, and the ferocity 
and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppres- 
sion and degradation under which they have been accustomed 
to live. Thus it was in our civil war. The heads of the Church 
and State reaped only that which they had sown. The govern- 25 
ment had prohibited free discussion; it had done its best to 
keep the people unacquainted w^th their duties and their rights. 
The retribution was just and natural. If our rulers suffered from 
popular ignorance, it was because they had themselves taken away 
the key of knowledge. If they were assailed with blind fury, it 30 
was because they had exacted an equally blind submission. 

It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the 

prepare the way for the reign on earth of Christ and his saints, which 
was to form the fifth monarchy, after the Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and 
Roman. 



64 MACAULAY. 

worst of them at first. Till men have been some time free, they 
know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine coun- 
tries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity in- 
temperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be com- 
5 pared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres.^ 

. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first find them- 
selves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expen- 
sive luxur}'', nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, how- 
ever, plenty teaches discretion, and, after wine has been for a 

lo few months their daily fare, they become more temperate than 
they had ever been in their own country, i In the same manner, 
tlie final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, 
and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, 
conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism 

IS on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its 
enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from 
the half-finished edifice ; they point to the flying dust, the fall- 
ing bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the 
whole appearance ; and then ask in scorn where the promised 

20 splendor and comfort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms 
were to prevail there would never be a good house or a good 
government in the world. 

Ariosto tells a pretty story 2 of a fairy, who, by some mysterious 
law of her nature, was condemned to appear at certain seasons 

25 in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured 
her during the period of her disguise were forever excluded from 
participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But to those 
who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, 
she afterwards revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form 

30 which was natural to her ; accompanied their steps, granted all 
their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them happy in 
love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is Liberty. At times 

1 A city (not a river) of Spain, famous for the production of sherry wine, 
which takes its name from, that of the place. 

2 In his poem, Orlando Furioso, Canto XLIII. 



MILTON, 65 

she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she hisses, 
she stings. But woe to those who in disgust shall venture to 
crush her! And happy are those who, having dared to receive 
her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be re- 
warded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory! s 

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired 
freedom produces ; and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner 
first leaves his cell he cannot bear the light of day ; he is unable 
to discriminate colors, or recognize faces. But the remedy is, 
not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the 10 
rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first 
dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half blind in 
the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will 
soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason. 
The extreme violence of opinions subsides. Hostile theories is 
correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to 
contend, and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of jus- 
tice and order is educed out of the chaos. 

Many poHticians of our time are in the habit of laying it down 
as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till 20 
they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the 
fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till 
he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they 
become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever. 

Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct of 25 
Milton and the other wise and good men who, in spite of much 
that was ridiculous and hateful in the conduct of their associates, 
stood firmly by the cause of pubhc liberty. We are not aware 
that the poet has been charged with personal participation in any 
of the blamable excesses of that time. The favorite topic of his 30 
enemies is the line of conduct which he pursued with regard to 
the execution of the king. Of that celebrated proceeding we by 
no means approve. Still we must say, in justice to the many 
eminent persons who concurred in it, and in justice more partic- 
ularly to the eminent person who defended it, that nothing can 3s 



66 MACAULAY. 

be more absurd than the imputations which, for the last hundred 
and sixty years, it has been the fashion to cast upon the Regi- 
cides.i We have, throughout, abstained from appeaUng to first 
principles. We will not appeal to them now. We recur again 

s to the parallel case of the Revolution. What essential distinc- 
tion can be drawn between the execution of the father and the 
deposition of the son ? What constitutional maxim is there 
which appHes to the former and not to the latter? The king 
can do no wrong. If so, James was as innocent as Charles 

lo could have been. The minister, only, ought to be responsible for 
the acts of the sovereign. If so, why not impeach Jeffreys ^ and 
retain James ? The person of a king is sacred. Was the person 
of James considered sacred at the Boyne?^ To discharge can- 
non against an army in which a king is known to be posted is to 

IS approach pretty near to regicide. Charles, too^ it should always 
be remembered, was put to death by men who had been exas- 
perated by the hostilities of several years, and who had never 
been bound to him by any other tie than that which was com- 
mon to them with all their fellow-citizens. Those who drove 

20 James from his throne, who seduced his army, who alienated his 
friends, who first imprisoned him in his palace, and then turned 
him out of it, who broke in upon his very slumbers by imperious 
messages, who pursued him with fire and sword from one part 
of the empire to another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his 

25 adherents, and attainted his innocent heir, were his nephew ^ and 
his two daughters.^ When we reflect on all these things, we are 

1 The men, sixty-seven in number, who sat in trial upon Charles I and 
signed his death warrant. Many of them were executed after the Resto- 
ration. 

2 A brutal chief justice in the reigns of Charles II and James II, who 
presided at the *' Bloody Assizes," and condemned over three hundred per- 
sons to death. 

3 A river of Ireland, on the banks of which was fought, July i, 1690, the 
battle in which William III defeated the exiled James II. 

4 William III. 

5 Mary, William's wife, and Anne, queen after William's death. 



MILTON, 67 

at a loss to conceive how the same persons who, on the 5th of 
November,! thank God for wonderfully conducting his servant 
William, and for making all opposition fall before him until he 
became our king and governor, can, on the 30th of January ,2 
contrive to be afraid that the blood of the Royal Mart}T may be s 
visited on themselves and their children. 

We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of Charles ; not 
because the constitution exempts the king from responsibility, 
for we know that all such maxims, however excellent, have their 
exceptions ; nor because we feel any peculiar interest in his 10 
character, for we think that his sentence describes him with 
perfect justice as '' a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a pubHc 
enemy ;'^ but because v/e are convinced that the measure was 
most injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed 
was a captive and a hostage ; his heir, to whom the allegiance is 
of every Royahst was instantly transferred, was at large. The 
Presbyterians could never have been perfectly reconciled to the 
father ; they had no such rooted enmity to the son. The great 
body of the people, also, contemplated that proceeding with feel- 
ings which, how^ever unreasonable, no government could safely 20 
venture to outrage. 

But though we think the conduct of the Regicides blamable, 
that of Milton appears to us in a very different light. The deed 
was done. It could not be undone. The evil was incurred ; 
and the object was to render it as small as possible. We censure 2."? 
the chiefs of the army for not yielding to the popular opinion ; 
but we cannot censure Milton for wishing to change that opinion. 
The very feeling which would have restrained us from commit- 
ting the act would have led us, after it had been committed, to 
defend it against the ravings of servility and superstition. For 30 
the sake of public liberty we wish that the thing had not been 
done while the people disapproved of it. But, for the sake of 



1 The day of William's landing in England, 16 

2 The day of the execution of Charles I, 1649. 



68 MACAULAY. 

public liberty, we should also have wished the people to approve 
of it when it was done. If. anything more were wanting to the 
justification of Milton, the book of Salmasius ^ would furnish it 
That miserable performance is now with justice considered only 
5 as a beacon to word-catchers who wish to become statesmen. 
The celebrity of the man who refuted it, the "^neae magni 
dextra," ^ gives it all its fame with the present generation. In 
that age the state of things was different. It was not then fully 
understood how vast an interval separates the mere classical 

lo scholar from the political philosopher. Nor can it be doubted 
that a treatise which, bearing the name of so eminent a critic, 
attacked the fundamental principles of all free governments, 
must, if suffered to remain unanswered, have produced a most 
pernicious effect on the public mind. 

15 We wish to add a few words relative to another subject, on 
which the enemies of Milton delight to dwell, — his conduct dur- 
ing the administration of the Protector.^ That an enthusiastic 
votary of liberty should accept office under a military usurper 
seems, no doubt, at first sight, extraordinary. But all the circum- 

20 stances in which the country was then placed were extraordinary. 
The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems 
to have coveted despotic power. He at first fought sincerely 
and manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted it till it had 
deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it was not till he 

35 found that the few members who remained after so many deaths, 
secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to them- 
selves a power which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon 
England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy.^ But even when 
thus placed by violence at the head of affairs, he did not assume 

1 See Introduction, p. 15. 

2 ^'^nese magni dextra (cadis)," thou fallest by the right hand of the 
great ^neas. VergiPs ^Eneid, Book X, Une 830. 

3 The title assumed by Oliver Cromwell with his supreme power in the 
government of the Commonwealth. 

4 An oligarchy is a government by a few ; an aristocracy. 



MILTON, 69 

unlimited power. He gave the country a constitution far more 
perfect than any which had at that time been known in the 
world. He reformed the representative system in a manner 
which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For him- 
self he demanded, indeed, the first place in the Commonwealth ; 5 
but with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadt- 
holder ^ or an American president. He gave the Parliament a 
voice in the appointment of ministers, and left k) it the whole 
legislative authority, not even reserving to himself a veto on its 
enactments ; and he did not require that the chief magistracy 10 
should be hereditary in his family. Thus far, we think, if the 
circumstances of the time and the opportunities which he had of 
aggrandizing himself be fairly considered, he will not lose by 
comparison with Washington 2 or Bolivar.^ Had his moderation 
been met by corresponding moderation, there is no reason to 15 
think that he would have overstepped the line which he had 
traced for himself. But when he found that his Parliaments 
questioned the authority under which they met, and that he was 
in danger of being deprived of the restricted power which was 
absolutely necessary to his personal safety, then it must be ac- 20 
knowledged he adopted a more arbitrary poHcy. 

Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were 
at first honest, though we believe that he was driven from the 
noble course which he had marked out for himself by the almost 
irresistible force of circumstances, though we admire, in common 25 
with all men of all parties, the ability and energy of his splendid 
administration, we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless 
power, even in his hands. We know that a good constitution is 
infinitely better than the best despot. But we suspect, that at 

1 English form of the Dutch stadhouder^ a title given to the governor of a 
province in Holland. 

2 George Washington (1732-99), the first President of the United States 
of America. 

3 A South American patriot called " The Liberator," for having put an 
end to Spanish rule in that country. 



70 MACAULAY, 

the time of which we speak, the violence of rehgious and poHtical 
enmities rendered a stable and happy settlement next to impos- 
sible. The choice lay, not between Cromwell and hberty, but 
between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton chose well no 
5 man can doubt who fairly compares the events of the Protecto- 
rate with those of the thirty years which succeeded it, the darkest 
and most disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was evi- 
dently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of 
an admirable system. Never before had religious liberty and the 

lo freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never 
had the national honor been better upheld abroad, or the seat of 
justice better filled at home. And it was rarely that any opposi- 
tion which stopped short of open rebellion provoked the resent- 
ment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions 

15 which he had established, as set down in the Instrument of Gov- 
ernment and the Humble Petition and Advice, were excellent. 
His practice, it is true, too often departed from the theory of 
these institutions. But had he lived a few years longer, it is 
probable that his institutions would have survived him, and that 

20 his arbitrary practice would have died with him. His power 
had not been consecrated by ancient prejudices. It was upheld 
only by his great personal qualities. Little, therefore, was to be 
dreaded from a second Protector, unless he were also a second 
Oliver Cromwell. The events which followed his decease are 

25 the most complete vindication of those who exerted themselves 
to uphold his authority. His death dissolved the whole frame 
of society. The army rose against the Parliament, the different 
corps of the army against each other. Sect raved against sect. 
Party plotted against party. The Presbyterians, in their eager- 

30 ness to be revenged on the Independents,^ sacrificed their own 
liberty, and deserted all their old principles. Without casting 
one glance on the past, or requiring one stipulation for the future, 

1 Seceders from the Presbyterian body, who composed the greater part of 
the parliamentary army. 



MILTON. 71 

they threw down their freedom at the feet of the most frivolous 
and heartless of tyrants. 

Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, 
the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without 
love ; of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices ; the paradise of cold s 
hearts and narrow minds ; the golden age of the coward, the 
bigot, and the slave. The king cringed to his rival that he might 
trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pock- 
eted with complacent infamy her degrading insults and her more 
degrading gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons 10 
regulated the policy of the state. The government had just 1 
ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. ■ 
The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, 
and the Anathema Maranatha ^ of every fawning dean. In every 
high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial 2 and 15 
Moloch ;^ and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols 
with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime suc- 
ceeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed 
of God and man, was a second time driven forth, to wander on 
the face of the earth, and to be a byword and a shaking of the 20 
head to the nations. 

Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the 
public character of Milton apply to him only as one of a large 
body. We shall proceed to notice some of the peculiarities 
which distinguished him from his contemporaries. And for that 25 
purpose it is necessary to take a short survey of the parties into 
which the political world was at that time divided. We must 

1 ''Anathema Maranatha," i.e., a form of denunciation, as in i Cor. xvi. 
22. Anathema is Greek for *' curse; " maranatha, a Syriac word, signifying 
" the Lord will come." 

2 A Hebrew word often used by translators of the Bible as a proper name, 
but really an abstract term meaning "worthlessness," and hence ''wicked- 
ness." 

3 Worshiped as a deity with cruel rites among the Ammonites in the days 
of Solomon, and at a later date among the Jews. 



72 MACAULAY, 

premise that our observations are intended to apply only to those 
who adhered, from a sincere preference, to one or to the other 
side. In days of public commotion every faction, like an Orien- 
tal army, is attended by a crowd of camp followers, a useless 
5 and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the 
hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it 
in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a de- 
feat. England, at the time of which we are treating, abounded 
with fickle and selfish politicians, who transferred their support 

lo to every government as it rose ; who kissed the hand of the king 

in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649 ; who shouted with equal 

y glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and 

\ when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn ; who dined on 

:] calves' heads, or stuck up oak branches, as circumstances altered, 

IS without the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out 
of the account. We take our estimate of parties from those who 
really deserve to be called partisans. 

We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable 
body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The 

20 odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. 
He that runs may read them ; nor have there been wanting atten- 
tive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years 
after the Restoration they were the theme of unmeasured invec- 
tive and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentious- 

25 ness of the press and of the stage, at the time when the press and 
the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters ; 
they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend them- 
selves ; and the public would not take them under its protection. 
They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender 

30 mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious sim- 
plicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their 
stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the scriptural 
phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt 
of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were 

35 indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laugh- 



MILTON, 73 

ers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learned. And 
he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against 
the influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so 
many excellent writers. 

^' Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio S 

Che mortali perigli in se contiene : 
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, 
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene."^ 

Those who roused the people to resistance ; who directed their 
measures through a long series of eventful years ; who formed, lo 
out of the most unpromising materials, the finest army that 
Europe had ever seen ; who trampled down king, church, and 
aristocracy ; who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and 
rebelHon, made the name of England terrible to every nation on 
the face of the earth, — were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their is 
absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of free 
masonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges 
were not more attractive. We regret that a body to whose cour- 
age and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations, had 
not the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherents 20 
of Charles I, or the easy good breeding for which the court of 
Charles II was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, 
we shall, like Bassanio ^ in the play, turn from the specious 

1 " This is the source of laughter and this the stream 
Which contains mortal perils in itself: 
Now here to hold in check our desire, 
And to be very cautious, becomes us." 

2 In Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Portia, in accordance with her 
father's will, was to take for her husband that one of her suitors who should 
select from among three caskets, of gold, silver, and lead respectively, the 
one in which her portrait had been placed. Bassanio, in choosing the leaden 
casket, became possessed of the portrait and the lady, the two other suitors 
selecting the gold and silver caskets, in which respectively a death's-head 
and a fool's head were found. 



74 MAC AULA Y, 

caskets which contain only the death's-head and the fool's head, 
and fix on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure. 

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a. peculiar 
character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and 
s eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general 
terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every 
event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing 
was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To 
know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him, was with them the 

lo great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the cere- 
monious homage which other sects substituted for the pure wor- 
ship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the 
Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the 
intolerable brightness, and to commune with Him face to face. 

IS Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The 
difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind 
seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval 
which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own 
eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superi- 

20 ority but His favor ; and, confident of that favor, they despised 
all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If 
they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, 
they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names 
were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in 

25 the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a 
splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had 
charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with 
hands ; their diadems, crowns of glory which should never fade 
away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they 

30 looked down with contempt ; for they esteemed themselves rich 
in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime 
language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests 
by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of 
them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible impor- 

35 tance belonged, on whose shghtest action the spirits of hght and 



MILTON, 75 

darkness looked with anxious interest ; who had been destined, 
before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a fehcity which 
should continue when heaven and earth should have passed 
away. Events which shortsighted politicians ascribed to earthly 
causes had been ordained on his account. For his sake em- s 
pires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the 
Almighty had proclaimed His will by the pen of the Evangel- 
ist and the harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no 
common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had 
been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood lo 
of no earthly sacrifice. It w^as for him that the sun had been 
darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, 
that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring 
God. 

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men : the one is 
all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion ; the other proud, 
calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust 
before his Maker ; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. 
In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and 
groans, and tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible 20 
illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers 
of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke 
screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane,^ he 
thought himself intrusted with the scepter of the millennial ^ 
year. Like Fleetwood,*^ he cried in the bitterness of his soul that 25 
God had hid his face from him. But when he took his seat 
in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous 

1 Sir Henry Vane (1613-62), identified with the Puritan cause, was gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts in 1636, and on his return to England in 1637 was 
active in opposition to the Royalist party. He was beheaded on Tower Hill 
in 1662. 

2 Millennium means a thousand years, and refers to a period during which 
the Messiah, as the prophecies are interpreted, will reign in person on the 
earth. 

3 Son-in-law of Oliver Cromwell, and a general in the parliamentary army. 



76 MACAU LAY. 

workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. 
People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, 
and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining 
hymns, might laugh at them. But those had httle reason to 

5 laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field 
of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and mihtary affairs 
a coolness of judgment and an immutabihty of purpose which 
some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, 
but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity 

loof their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every 
other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity 
and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and 
pleasiu-e its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their 
raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. 

IS Enthusiasm had made them Stoics,^ had cleared their minds from 
every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the 
influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead 
them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. 
They went through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus ^ 

20 with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling 

with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human 

infirmities ; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain ; not to 

be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier. 

Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. 

25 We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the 
sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that 
the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things 
too high for mortal reach ; and we know that, in spite of their 
hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that 

30 bad system, — intolerance and extravagant austerity; that they 

1 The Stoic philosophers held that we should lead a passionless life, indif- 
ferent to any sensations of either pleasure or pain. 

2 An *' iron man " (representing power), in the Fifth Book of Spenser's 
Faery Queene, follows Sir Artegal, who personates justice, with an iron flail, 
'* with which he thrashed out falsehood and did truth unfold," 



MILTON. 77 

had their anchorites and their crusades,^ their Dunstans^ and their 
De Montforts,^ their Dominies^ and their Escobars.^ Yet, when 
all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate 
to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body. 

The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly be- s 
cause it was the cause of religion. There was another party, by 
no means numerous, but distinguished by learning and ability, 
which acted with them on very different principles. We speak 
of those whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the Heathens, 
men who were, in the phraseology of that time, doubting Thom- lo 
ases^ or careless Gallios^ with regard to religious subjects, but 
passionate worshipers of freedom. Heated by the study of an- 
cient literature, they set up their country as their idol, and pro- 
posed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch ^ as their examples. 
They seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines ^ is 
of the French Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the 
line of distinction between them and their devout associates, 
whose tone and manner they sometimes found it convenient to 
affect, and sometimes, it is probable, imperceptibly adopted. 

1 The name given to the religious wars waged in Palestine against the 
Mohammedans by the Christian natives of Europe in the eleventh, twelfth, 
and thirteenth centuries, for the possession of the Holy Sepulcher. 

2 St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury in England in the tenth century, 
who made the Anglo-Saxon Church subject to that of Rome. 

3 DeMontfort (ii6o?-i2i8) was a French nobleman notorious for his ter- 
rible persecution of the Albigenses, a religious sect in the south of France,, 
which had seceded from the Roman Church. 

4 Dominic, founder of the order of Black Friars or Dominicans, was De 
Montfort's associate in these cruelties. 

5 Escobar (i 589-1669), a Spanish Jesuit, was a writer on casuistry, which 
treats of delicate questions of conscience and morals. 

6 John XX. 24, 25. 7 Acts xviii. 17. 

^ A Greek writer, author of parallel Lives of the most famous Greeks and 
Romans. He lived in the first century of the Christian era. 

9 The Girondists in the French Revolution, who favored the Republic, 
but were opposed to its excesses : so called from their leader, Jean Pierre 
Brissot. 



78 MACAULAY. 

We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak 
of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect 
candor. We shall not charge upon a whole party the profligacy 
and baseness of the horse boys, gamblers, and bravoes, whom the 

5 hope of license and plunder attracted from all the dens of White- 
friars to the standard of Charles, and who disgraced their asso- 
ciates by excesses which, under the stricter discipline of the par- 
liamentary armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more 
favorable specimen. Thinking as we do that the cause of the 

10 king was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain 
from looking with complacency on the character of the honest 
old Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparing them with 
the instruments which the despots of other countries are com- 
pelled to employ ; with the mutes who throng their antechambers, 

IS and the Janissaries ^ who mount guard at their gates. Our Roya- 
list countrymen were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing 
at every step, and simpering at every word. They were not 
mere machines for destruction, dressed up in uniforms, caned 
into skill, intoxicated into valor, defending without love, destroy- 

20 ing without hatred. There was a freedom in their subserviency, 
a nobleness in their very degradation. The sentiment of indi-^ 
vidual independence was strong within them. They were in- 
deed misled, but by no base or selfish motive. Compassion and 
romantic honor, the prejudices of childhood, and the venerable 

25 names of history, threw over them a spell potent as that of 
Duessa;2 and, like the Red Cross Knight, they thought that 
they were doing battle for an injured beauty, while they defended 
a false and loathsome sorceress. In truth, they scarcely entered 
at all into the merits of the political question. It was not for a 

1 A celebrated body of Turkish troops, composed mostly of Christian 
youths captured in war and trained in military discipline. They were so 
called from Yeni-tsheri^ meaning " hero soldiers." 

2 A sorceress (typifying falsehood), in the First Book of Spenser's Faery 
Queene, who in the guise of Una (representing truth and purity) deceives for 
a time her champion, the Red Cross Knight. 



IMILTON. 79 

treacherous king or an intolerant church that they fought, but 
fur the old banner which had waved in so many battles over 
the heads of their fathers, and for the altars at which they had 
received the hands of their brides. Though nothing could be 
more erroneous than their political opinions, they possessed, in a 5 
far greater degree than their adversaries, those quahties which 
are the grace of private life. With many of the vices of the 
Round Table, 1 they had also many of its virtues, — courtesy, 
generosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect for women. They 
had far more both of profound and of polite learning than the 10 
Puritans. Their manners were more engaging, their tempers 
more amiable, their tastes more elegant, and their households 
more cheerful. 

Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which we 
have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a free- 15 
thinker. He was not a Royalist. In his character the noblest 
qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. 
From the Parliament and from the court, from the conventicle ^ 
and from the Gothic cloister,^ from the gloomy and sepulchral 
circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the 20 
hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself what- 
ever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and per- 
nicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. 
Like the Puritans, he lived 

As ever in his great Taskmaster's eye.* 25 

Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an Almighty 
Judge and an eternal reward. And hence he acquired their con- 
tempt of external circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, 

1 The mythical table of King Arthur and his knights. 

2 A term of reproach applied to meetings of English or Scotch Noncon- 
formists. 

3 The cloister was an arcade around the open courts of monasteries and 
cathedrals, usually built in the Gothic style of architecture. 

4 See Milton's Sonnet on his Twenty-third Birthday. 



So MACAULAY, 

their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest skeptic or the 
most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion 
of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous 
jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure. 

5 Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the 
estimable and ornamental qualities which were almost entirely 
monopolized by the party of the tyrant. There was none who 
had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for 
every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honor 

lo and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and 
his associations were such as harmonize best with monarchy and 
aristocracy. He was under the influence of all the feelings by 
which the gallant Cavahers were misled. But of those feehngs 
he was the master and not the slave. Like the hero ^ of Homer, 

15 he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination ; but he was not fas- 
cinated. He hstened to the song of the Sirens ;2 yet he ghded 
by without being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the 
cup of Circe ;^ but he bore about him a sure antidote against the 
effects of its bewitching sweetness. The illusions which capti- 

20 vated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The 
statesman was proof against the splendor, the solemnity, and the 
romance which enchanted the poet. Any person who will con- 
trast the sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy with the 
exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in the 

25 '^ Penseroso," which was published about the same time, will 
understand our meaning. This is an inconsistency which, more 

1 Ulysses, the hero of Homer's Odyssey. 

2 The Sirens were maidens who, as related by Homer, lived on an island 
in the ocean, to which they lured passing mariners by their sweet songs, only 
to destroy them. Ulysses, forewarned by Circe, stuffed the ears of his com- 
panions with wax, and had himself lashed to a mast, until they had sailed 
out of hearing of the fatal songs. 

3 A sorceress who by her drugs changed human beings into wolves, lions, 
swine, etc. She thus changed twenty-two of Ulysses' companions, but the 
hero himself, having obtained from Mercury an antidote in the herb moly, 
was proof against her charm. 



MILTON. 8 1 

than anything else, raises his character in our estimation, because 
it shows how many private tastes and feehngs he sacrificed, in 
order to do what he considered his duty to mankind. It is the [ 
very struggle of the noble Othello. i His heart relents ; but his v 
hand is firm. He does naught in hate, but all in honor. He s 
kisses the beautiful deceiver before he destroys her. 

That from which the pubhc character of Milton derives its 
great and peculiar splendor still remains to be mentioned. If 
he exerted himself to overthrow a forsworn king and a perse- 
cuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunction with others. lo 
But the glory of the battle which he fought for the species of 
freedom which is the most valuable, and which was then the 
least understood, the freedom of the human mind, is all his own. 
Thousands and tens of thousands among his contemporaries 
raised their voices against ship money and the Star Chamber. 15 
But there were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils 
of moral and intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would 
result from the liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of 
private judgment. These were the objects which Milton justly 
conceived to be the most important. He was desirous that the 20 
people should think for themselves as well as tax themselves, and 
should be emancipated from the dominion of prejudice as well 
as from that of Charles. He knew that those who, with the best 
intentions, overlooked these schemes of reform, and contented 
themselves with puUing down the king and imprisoning the 25 
malignants, acted like the heedless brothers in his own poem, 
who, in their eagerness to disperse the train of the sorcerer, neg- 
lected the means of liberating the captive. They thought only 
of conquering when they should have thought of disenchanting. 

^^ Oh, ye mistook, ye should have snatch'd his wand, 30 

And bound him fast ; without his rod reversed, 

^ The hero of Shakespeare's play of that name, upon whose simple nature 
the villain lago works, till he is persuaded that his wife Desdemona is false 
to him. 



82 MACAU LAY, 

And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
We cannot free the Lady that sits here 
In stony fetters fix'd, and motionless." ^ 

To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break the 
5 ties which bound a stupefied people to the seat of enchantment, 
was the noble aim of Milton. To this all his public conduct was 
directed. For this he joined the Presbyterians ; for this he for- 
sook them. He fought their perilous battle ; but he turned away 
with disdain from their insolent triumph. He saw that they, 

lo like those whom they had vanquished, were hostile to the liberty 
■ of thought. He therefore joined the Independents, and called 
upon Cromwell to break the secular chain, and to save free con- 
science from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf.^ With a view 
to the same great object, he attacked the hcensing system,^ in 

IS that sublime treatise which every statesman should wear as a 
sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes. His 
attacks were, in general, directed less against particular abuses 
than against those deeply seated errors on which almost all 
abuses are founded, — the servile worship of eminent men and 

20 the irrational dread of innovation. 

That he might shake the foundations of these debasing senti- 
ments more effectually, he always selected for himself the boldest 
literary services. He never came up in the rear, when the out- 
works had been carried and the breach entered. He pressed 

25 into the forlorn hope. At the beginning of the changes, he wrote 
with incomparable energy and eloquence against the bishops. 
But, when his opinion seemed likely to prevail, he passed on to 
other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the crowd of writers 
who now hastened to insult a falling party. There is no more 

30 hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth into 

1 Comus, lines 815-819. 

2 "Help us to save free conscience from the paw 
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw." 

Milton's Sonnet to Cromwell. 
3 See Introduction, p. 14. 



MJLrON. 83 

those dark and infected recesses in which no hght has ever shone. 
But it was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate 
the noisome vapors, and to brave the terrible explosion. Those 
who most disapprove of his opinions must respect the hardihood 
with which he maintained them. He, in general, left to others 5 
the credit of expounding and defending the popular parts of his 
religious and political creed. He took his own stand upon those 
which the great body of his countrymen reprobated as criminal, 
or derided as parodoxical. He stood up for divorce and regi- 
cide. He attacked the prevailing systems of education. His 10 
radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the god of light 
and fertility : — 

'^ Nitor in adversum ; nee me, qui caetera, vincit 
Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi.''^ 

It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, 15 
in our time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the 
attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with 
the full power of the English language. They abound with pas- 
sages compared with which the finest declamations of Burke 2 
sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of 20 
gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even 
in the earlier books of the '' Paradise Lost " has the great poet 
ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial works 
in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of 
devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic 25 
language, '' a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping sym- 
phonies." 

We had intended to look more closely at these performances, 

1 *' I contend against opposing circumstances; that force which subdues 
'other things affects me not, and I am borne in a direction contrary to the 

swiftly moving world." — Ovid's Aletamorphosesy Book II, lines 72, 73. 

2 Edmund Burke (1729-97), a distinguished orator, statesman, and polit- 
ical and philosophical writer. 



H MACAULAY, 

to analyze the peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some length 
on the subHme wisdom of the '' Areopagitica '' i and the nervous 
rhetoric of the '' Iconoclast," ^ and to point out some of those 
magnificent passages which occur in the '' Treatise of Reforma- 
s tion," and the '* Animadversions on the Remonstrant." But the 
length to which our remarks have already extended renders this 
impossible. 

We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear ourselves 
away from the subject. The days immediately following the 

lopubhcation of this relic of Milton appear to be pecuHarly set 
apart, and consecrated to his memory. And we shall scarcely be 
censured if, on this his festival, we be found lingering near his 
shrine, how worthless soever may be the offering which we bring 
to it. While this book lies on our table, we seem to be contem- 

15 poraries of the writer. We are transported a hundred and fifty 
years back. We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in 
his small lodging ; that we see him sitting at the old organ be- 
neath the faded green hangings ; that we can catch the quick 
twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain to find the day; that we are 

20 reading in the lines of his noble countenance the proud and 
mournful history of his glory and his affliction. We image to 
ourselves the breathless silence in which we should listen to his 
slightest word ; the passionate veneration with which we should 
kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it ; the earnestness with 

25 which we should endeavor to console him, if indeed such a spirit 
could need consolation, for the neglect of an age unworthy of 
his talents and his virtues ; the eagerness with which we should 
contest with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend EUwood,^ 
the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the 

30 immortal accents which flowed from his lips. 

These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be ashamed 
of them ; nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in 

1 See Introduction, p. 14. 

2 See Introduction, p. 15 . 

3 Thomas Ell wood. See Introduction, p. 18. 



MILTON, 85 

any degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in 
the habit of idohzing either the hving or the dead. And we 
think that there is no more certain indication of a weak and ill- 
regulated intellect than that propensity which, for want of a 
better name, we will venture to christen Boswellism.^ But there 1 
are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and 
the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have 
proved pure, which have been weighed in the balance and have 
not been found wanting, which have been declared sterling by 
the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped lo 
with the image and superscription of the Most High. These 
great men we trust that we know how to prize ; and of these 
was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are 
pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and 
flowers which the Virgin Martyr 2 of Massinger sent down from 15 
the gardens of Paradise to the earth, and which were distinguished 
from the productions of other soils, not only by superior bloom 
and sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to 
heal. They are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and 
purify. Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life 20 
or the writings of the great poet and patriot, without aspiring to 
emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has 
enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he labored for the 
public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private 
calamity, the lofty disdain wath which he looked down on tempta- 25 
tions and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and 
tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country 
and with his fame. 

1 From James Boswell, who wrote the Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, which, 
though fulsome in its eulogy of that writer, is conceded to be the greatest of 
all works in biography, and is so pronounced by Macaulay. 

2 A play by Philip Massinger (i 583-1 640), one of the Elizabethan drama- 
tists. 



MACAULAY'S STYLE AND METHOD. 

Macaulay's Essay on Milton is one of the earliest and best known 
of his writings. It has many of the characteristics of style and 
method ^ that all his work presents, but it displays more youthful 
enthusiasm and more lavish ornament than any of his later produc- 
tions. Macaulay himself regretted in his mature years the lack of re- 
straint that appears throughout the Essay. In the Preface to the 
collected edition of his Essays (1842), he says: ^^The author of these 
Essays is so sensible of their defects that he has repeatedly refused 
to let them appear in a form which might seem to indicate that he 
thought them worthy of a permanent place in Enghsh hterature. 
Nor would he now give his consent to the republication of pieces so 
imperfect, if, by withholding his consent, he could make repubhcation 
impossible. . . . No attempt has been made to remodel any of the 
pieces which are contained in these volumes. Even the criticism on 
Milton, which was written w^hen the author was fresh from college, 
and which contains scarcely a paragraph such as his mature judg- 
ment approves, still remains overloaded with gaudy and ungraceful 
ornament.'' ^ In this characterization Macaulay is quite as severe 
as any of his critics. 

The pupil should, then, approach this Essay with an open mind, 
realizing that it is a famous contribution to hterature, but that it 
is full of heightened and unreserved statement. Macaulay makes 
practically every assertion with an air of assurance that he is un- 
questionably right. In general he gives a plausible look to his opin- 

1 For some pointed criticism on Macaulay and his Essay on Milton^ 
^Matthew Arnold's paper, A French Critic on Milton, should be read. 

2 The highly figurative form of portions of this Essay is in marked con- 
trast with the plainer, though not less animated, style of most of Macaulay's 
later work. Note the figures on the following pages: page 31, lines 15-20, 
32: 7-25, 34: 19-20, 38: 8-12, 52: 1-3, 64: 4-65: 13. 

86 



MACAU LAY'S STYLE AND METHOD. 87 

ions and is very likely to convince the average reader that what is so 
clearly and confidently stated must be true. But the judicious reader 
must discount somewhat the unqualified superlatives. 

It is perhaps unnecessary to remark that, in general, Macaulay 
does not go much below the surface of things, and deals rather with 
matters of fact than with matters of opinion. In this Essay on Milton 
he discusses general principles somewhat more than is his w^ont. 

Notwithstanding his shortcomings Macaulay is an exceptionally 
valuable writer to put into the hands of young students, since both 
his defects and his many admirable qualities are so easily discernible, 
and nowhere more than in this Essay on Milton. He presents a 
vigorous, strongly marked style, with Httle shading, and with pe- 
culiarities that reappear at every turn. His style is not in every 
sense a model for imitation: it is overpositive, overemphatic, and 
hence somewhat lacking in delicacy and flexibility. But it is in gen- 
eral astonishingly clear and has the power of engaging attention. It 
is, moreover, a model of correctness in grammatical form and of 
precision in choice of words. As a rule, any word or construction that 
Macaulay adopts may be safely used. 

As emphatic expression is Macaulay's constant aim, it is natural 
that he should employ various devices to call attention to what might 
be overlooked. He sets one group of paragraphs over against another; 
one sentence, one phrase, one word, over against another sentence, 
phrase, word. He uses words of contrast with great frequency. His 
favorite figure is antithesis; and his favorite conjunction is hut. He 
often carries the thought by successive assertions to about the 
middle of a paragraph, and then by the aid of hut, yet, and similar 
words, puts the second half of the paragraph in contrast with the 
first half.i 

Macaulay does not use a great variety of words of connection. 
Besides those already mentioned the most frequent in this Essay are 
and, moreover, indeed, this, these, such. His words for drawing con- 
clusions are therefore, hence, thus. In the art of joining one portion 
of his writing to another Macaulay is by no means so good a model 
as Burke or a score of other writers that might be named, but there 
is never any difficulty in following his thought. 

^ The pupil should be required to collect copious examples of Macaulay's 
use of hut, yet, however, and on the contrary. 



88 MACAU LAY'S STYLE AND METHOD. 

Diction. — Macaulay chooses his words carefully, with a tendency 
to select the most emphatic and picturesque terms. Whenever possi- 
ble he employs a specific, rather than a general, word. In this par- 
ticular his practice is in accord with his habit of showering illustrative 
examples and allusions upon his pages. 

Sentences. — ^Among modern prose writers Macaulay is remark- 
able for the brevity of his sentences. In his writings sentences of a 
line or two are very common, though perhaps less noticeable in the 
Essay on Milton than in some others."^ The frequent use of these 
brief sentences and the constant omission of conjunctions give the 
energetic snip-snap so characteristic of Macaulay's manner. Sen- 
tences of this type have the advantage of being clear and forcible, 
but they lack the dignity and variety of longer sentences. It is to be 
noted that in many cases his short sentences are made such by the 
punctuation. A period takes the place of a comma or a semicolon, — 
and there are two sentences instead of one ! Macaulay now and then 
writes two sentences unconnected by a conjunction, which, however, 
is readily inferred." On page 65 the five sentences beginning, "In a 
few years,'' etc., might easily have been combined into one. His long 
sentences are rarely, if ever, involved, but are usually mere aggrega- 
tions of simple parts, each of which yields up its meaning instantly. 
To the young writer who is inclined to the manufacture of ill-joined, 
awkwardly framed, clauses, the study of Macaulay's sentences is 
likely to be of the utmost value. 

Repetition. — One habit of his calls for special mention. He con- 
stantly repeats words or phrases for the sake of clearness and em- 
phasis. Particularly noticeable is his habit of beginning successive 
sentences with the same word. His favorite words for this purpose 
are the personal pronouns he,^ we^^ ihey^ though he occasionally em- 
ploys the (p. 23), some (p. 50), hut (p. 67), ij (p. 74), etc. 

1 But see pages 25, 27, 29, 30, 44, 45, 46, 47, etc. 

2 A good example occurs on page 53, line 10: "That great battle was 
fought for no single generation, for no single land. The destinies of the 
human race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English 
people." 

3 See pp. 30, 31, 33, 46, 68, 69, 75, 82, Zi, 

4 See pp. 37, 43, 55, 66, 67, 76, 78, 84. 
6 See pp. 27, 47, 48, 49, 62, 72. 



MACAULAY'S STYLE AND METHOD, 89 

Exaggeration. — In harmony with Macaulay's free use of em- 
phatic forms of expression is his habit of exaggeration. Examples 
recur constantly in his pages and need not be here pointed out. But 
the pupil should collect some of the most characteristic instances.^ 

Paragraphs. — Macaulay's paragraphs in this Essay are not in 
every case joined to preceding paragraphs by words of expHcit refer- 
ence, though in general the connection is evident enough. Nor is 
every paragraph developed from the paragraph topic along strict 
logical lines. The connection of thought is often one of association 
only. But no paragraph leaves the reader for a moment in doubt as 
to its theme. This he commonly presents in the opening sentence. 

Not uncommonly he concludes a paragraph with a compact, strik- 
ing sentence that gathers up the main thought in a few expressive 
words.^ 

Groups of Paragraphs. — Macaulay aids his reader in a variety 
of ways to follow his development of the subject. At the beginning of 
a connected group of paragraphs he commonly places a sentence that 
clearly indicates what he is next to discuss. Within the groups them- 
selves he is, as already remarked, less careful to point out the connec- 
tion in every case. Now and then he writes an entire paragraph, the 
main purpose of which is to show the reader how far he has advanced 
and what still Hes before him. Paragraphs of this type are of the 
utmost value to the reader and should be studied with care as models.^ 

A very brief examination of this Essay shows that it is in no sense 
a Hfe of Milton, but rather a discussion of a few important matters — 
his poetry, his pubhc life, his character. The Essay begins with a 
business-like presentation of the essential facts about the book that 
furnished the excuse for the article in the Edinburgh Review. Then 
follows a paragraph containing a statement of the main topics that 
the author intends to treat, — 

Page 24, lines 7-21. "We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the 

1 See pp. 25, 34, 43, 51, 70, etc. 

2 Instances occur in the following pages, and should be carefully studied: 
page 23, lines 2-3; 32:24-25, 33:7-8; 34:23, 36:22, 43:35-44:3, 
45:18-20, 52:2-3, 59:2-4, 62:7-8, 12-13, 70:31-71:2, 71:17-21, 
81:5-6. 

^ See the paragraphs 24:7-21, 24:22-25:6, 32:14-25, 39:9-23, 
54:22-55:15, 71:22-72:17, etc. 



go MACAU LAY'S STYLE AND METHOD, 

interest, transient as it may be, which this work has excited. . . . 
Nor, we are convinced, will the severest of our readers blame us, 
if, on an occasion hke the present, we turn for a short time from 
the topics of the day, to commemorate, in all love and reverence, 
the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, the 
philosopher, the glory of English Hterature, the champion and the 
martyr of English liberty." 

The following sentences scattered through the Essay clearly indi- 
cate the larger divisions: 

24: 22-23. "It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and it 
is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. '^ 

32: 14-15. "It is not our intention to attempt anything like a com- 
plete examination of the poetry of Milton.'^ 

40: 2-4. "We cannot, we think, better illustrate our opinion re- 
specting our own great poet, than by contrasting him with the father 
of Tuscan hterature." 

49*32-33. "The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished 
by loftiness of spirit; that of Dante by intensity of feeling." 

53* 5~6- "His public conduct was such as was to be expected from 
a man of a spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful." 

54: 22-55: 3. "The pubhc conduct of Milton must be approved or 
condemned, according as the resistance of the people to Charles I 
shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall therefore make 
no apology for dedicating a few pages to the discussion of that 
interesting and most important question." 

71: 22-27. "Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made 
on the public character of Milton apply to him only as one of a large 
body. We shall proceed to notice some of the peculiarities which 
distinguished him from his contemporaries. And for that purpose 
it is necessary to take a short survey of the parties into which the 
political world was at that time divided." 

72: 18. "We would speak first of the Puritans." 

79: 14-15. "Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes 
which we have described." 

84:8. "We must conclude." 

These topic sentences, which are developed in groups of para- 
graphs, present the general plan or framework of the Essay, and 



NOTES. 91 

should be filled out by the pupil, who can easily make a more detailed 
analysis of the separate groups of paragraphs. 



NOTES. 

21: 10. Wood and Toland. Anthony A Wood (163 2-1695) was a 
famous antiquary and an early biographer of Milton. John Toland 
(1670-17 2 2) wrote (1698) a life of Milton, which he prefixed to the 
edition of Milton's prose works that he edited. 

21: 13. Therefore. As already noted, Macaulay uses a compara- 
tively small variety of conjunctions, though he employs them fre- 
quently. For drawing a conclusion his favorite word in this Essay is 
therefore. Compare pp. 25, 26, 29. Do you find other instances? 

21: 13. Probable. Later researches have disproved Macaulay 's 
suggestion. 

22: 5. His majesty. George IV (1820-30). 

22: 18. Ceremonial cleanness, etc. Macaulay is alluding to the 
pedantic choice of words by some modern writers of Latin, who in 
their way were as scrupulous as wxre the ancient Pharisees in 
observing the niceties of the Jewish ceremonial law. 

23 : 18. Observation. This use of observation is now rare or obsolete. 
What is the more usual term? 

25: 18. Poetry almost necessarily declines. The pupil should by no 
means accept all that Macaulay advances in this famous passage, 
w^hich extends to 30: 28. 

30: 6. And, as the magic lantern acts, etc. In general, Macaulay 
avoids, particularly in his later work, the use of and at the beginning 
of a sentence, and especially at the beginning of a paragraph. Writers 
like Ruskin and Matthew Arnold are far less scrupulous in this matter. 
Note other examples in this Essay, — 30:23, 43:35, 60:28, 30, 
65:3, 17, 70: 12, 71:25, 84:8, 85:2. 

32. Note the figurative form into w^hich the terminal sentence of 
each of the two paragraphs on this page is thrown. Do you find 
other paragraphs ending in a similar way? 

33:5-8. He does not . . . He sketches . . . He strikes . . . 
Note the similarity of form in these successive sentences. See p. ^^. 

33: 27. In support of these observations. How far back do these 
w^ords carry us? 



92 NOTES. 

34:1. They are charmed names. Possibly Macaulay had in mind 
the following passage from Paradise Lost, I, 576-587: 

"Though all the giant brood 
Of Phlegra with th' heroic race were join'd 
That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side 
Mix'd with auxiliar Gods; and what resounds 
In fable or romance of Uther's son, 
Begirt with British and Armoric knights; 
And all who since, baptized or infidel, 
Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, 
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond; 
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore. 
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
By Fontarabbia.'' 

34: 3. What is meant by associated ideas? 

34: II. Chivalrous romance. The word chivalrous is derived from 
the French cheval, a horse; and hence we have the word chevalier, a 
horseman, a knight. In the Middle Ages roniances dealing with the 
exploits of knights were written in great numbers. Every knight was 
expected to conform to high standards of courtesy, and, accordingly, 
knightly conduct became a synonym for chivalrous conduct, in our 
sense of the term. 

34: 11-12. What are lists, and why are they called trophied? What 
are housings? devices? 

35: 13. These hostile elements. How far back do these words 
carry us? 

36: 12. But if we foiget, etc., to the end of the paragraph. Notice 
the persistent antithesis. 

36: 23. Euripides. Macaulay came in later years to hold a much 
higher opinion of Euripides than is here expressed. "I can hardly 
account," he says, "for the contempt which, at school and college, 
I felt for Euripides. I own that I like him now better than 
Sophocles.'' — Trevelyan, Life of Macaulay, I, 416. 

39: 24. The only poem, etc. This paragraph is clearly transitional. 
The portion of the Essay that it introduces runs on to p. 50. 

42:17-19. His own hands • . . His own feet . . . His own 



NOTES. 93 

brow . . . Notice the emphatic repetitions, the similar structure, 
and the number of words in each sentence. 

46: I. From these considerations. How far back does this carry 
the thought? 

51:6. Observe the characteristic repetition of nor. What is the 
effect? Is Macaulay imitating a passage from the Bible? 

55. Note the lack of connective words in the sentences on the first 
half of the page. 

57: 25. They did not drive out a tyrant, etc. Point out the 
strongly contrasted words in this sentence. 

59: 5-14. Why, etc. What is gained by the repetitions? 

59: 18. A dynasty of strangers. William of Orange, who came to 
the EngHsh throne in 1688, was a Hollander. The German House of 
Hanover, from which the EngHsh royal family is directly descended, 
succeeded Queen Anne in 17 14. 

60:8. For more than ten years, etc. Observe the characteristic 
repetitions in structure and the free omission of conjunctions in this 
paragraph. 

61: 5-10. We charge him . . . We accuse him . . . We 
censure him . . . Note the striking series of contrasted elements 
in these sentences. 

64, 65. The free use of such figures of speech and illustrations as 
appear on these pages was largely given up by Macaulay in his later 
years. See p. 86. 

68: 15. We wish to add a few words. Compare this beginning with, 
"We cannot refrain, '^ etc., 61: 26. 

70: 5. Protectorate. The period during which OHver Cromwell 
(Dec. 16, 1653, to Sept. 3, 1658) and his son Richard (Sept. 3, 1658, 
to May 25, 1659) were rulers of England, with the title of Protector. 

70: 15. Instnmient of Govenmient. ''The name given to a paper 
constitution of forty- two articles, called ' the Government of the Com- 
monwealth,' by which the Protectorate of Cromwell was established 
(December, 1653)." — Low and Pulling, Did. of English History, s. v. 

70: 16. The Humble Petition and Advice was the "second paper 
Constitution of the Protectorate (1657).'' 

71:3. Those days. After the Restoration of Charles H, in 1660. 

71:7. His rival. Louis XIV, of France, who paid Charles H a 
large sum of money every year to insure his subservience. 



94 NOTES. 

71:7-13. The king . . . The caresses . . . The govern- 
ment . . . The principles . . . Note the successive asser- 
tions, with the same introductory word. 

71:14. In every high place. Observe the biblical allusion, and the 
double meaning. 

71: 19. A second time, that is, in 1688, the year of the "glorious 
Revolution." 

72: 12. Westminster Hail. "The great hall of William Rufus," as 
Macaulay elsewhere calls it, was erected by the second of the Norman 
kings in 1097, and rebuilt from the foundations in 1397-99 by Rich- 
ard II. This hall has witnessed many of the most stirring scenes in 
EngHsh history. 

72: 13. Tyburn. Until 1783 the ordinary place of executions in 
London. 

72: 14. Calves' heads. Dining on calves' heads was designed to 
ridicule Charles I, who was decapitated on Jan. 30, 1649. The 
obvious implication of the feast was that Charles had shown the 
understanding of a calf. 

72: 14. Oak branches. An allusion to the oak in which Charles II 
hid after his defeat at the battle of Worcester, Sept. 3, 1651. 

72-76. This passage describing the Puritans is one of the most 
celebrated in Macaulay's writings. 

76: 24. Such we believe, etc. How far back does the word such 
carry us? 

78: I. We now come to the Royalists. In grace and dignity and 
elevation of thought this is one of the most admirable paragraphs in 
the entire Essay, but, characteristically enough, it might be termi- 
nated at more than one point without compeUing the reader to sus- 
pect that more was to follow. Macaulay's is not in general a closely 
knit style. 

78: 5. Whitefriars. A disreputable quarter of London, between 
Fleet Street and the Thames, which enjoyed privileges of sanctuary 
and was, in the seventeenth century, a favorite refuge for debtors 
and thieves. The scene of a portion of Scott's Fortunes of Nigel is 
laid in this quarter, which, in Milton's time, was also known as 
Alsatia. 

79: 14. Any of the classes which we have described. How far back 
does this sentence take us? 



NOTES. 95 

79: 15. He was not a Puritan, etc. Note the three sentences, each 
containing the same number of words, and all constructed on the 
same plan. The pupil should note the frequent antitheses in this 
paragraph. 

81: 5. He kisses the beautiful deceiver, etc. An excellent instance 
of the comprehensive and emphatic terminal sentence, of which 
Macaulay is fond. Compare p. 34, and elsewhere. 

81 : 15. Ship money. An illegal exaction by the government for the 
equipping of vessels for the navy. John Hampden unsuccessfully 
resisted the payment of this tax, which was, however, afterwards 
declared by the Long Parliament to be contrary to law. 

81: 15. Star Chamber. A court composed of members of the Privy 
Council, sitting without a jury, and the wiUing instrument in carry- 
ing out the tyrannical plans of James I and Charles I. It was abol- 
ished in 1 64 1. 

83 : 20. Field of cloth of gold. An allusion to the richly decorated 
plain of Ardres in France, where King Francis I entertained King 
Henry VHI of England in 1520. 

84: 14. We seem to be contemporaries of the writer. The passage 
that follows resembles in several particulars the conclusion of Ma- 
caulay 's essay on Boswell's Life of Johnson. In that essay the author 
imagines himself at the club where Johnson, Burke, and other famous 
men used to meet. 



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